Punishment and rehabilitation

Conclusion Despite partial amendments to criminal legislation the existing Czech criminal system is marked by its punitive character. Despite a slight change in attitudes towards punishment after 1990, the nature of penalties has not been adapted to the new goals. The punishment which fulfils the retributive, i.e. deterrent objective will not automatically become a means of re-education and rehabilitation merely because we change its objective in law. The new purpose of punishment requires changes in contents of punishment, i.e. searching for effective ways of handling offenders both outside and inside prisons. We have to renounce the idea that rehabilitation of offenders can be achieved by coercion. We have to respond to offending by imposing an adequate punishment which must be executed paying full respect to human rights and dignity. In this context, any offender must be able to exercise his or her right to request conditions and means for social reintegration (training, improvement of skills, medical treatment etcetera), if the offender is really interested in rehabilitation. We can only create conditions, we cannot reintegrate anybody by force. Rehabilitation in the Czech Republic continues to be more a good intention than a reality.     

Ethics and the psychiatric determination of competency to be executed

For the last several centuries, most jurisdictions using capital punishment have had formal or informal rules that prohibit the execution of the mentally ill. In this article, the procedures for such exclusions in Florida are examined. The article begins by attempting to answer the question of why legislators and judges, at least nominally, have prohibited the execution of the mentally ill. Next, Florida's criteria for defining and procedures for excluding mentally ill prisoners are examined and found to be vague. We then turn attention to the ethical problems created by the statute and its implementation that face the participating psychiatrists and the profession. These problems are compounded because the physician's findings are not acted upon by politically neutral authorities and the inmate has no opportunity to challenge the findings with his own panel of experts. Finally, since any exclusion of the mentally ill from execution is temporary and the patient will be executed if he recovers, the dilemmas facing the treatment staff if the death sentence is not commuted to life imprisonment before treatment are discussed.     

Moore��s Moral Facts and the Gap in the Retributive Theory

The purely retributive moral justification of punishment has a gap at its centre. It fails to explain why the offender should not be protected from punishment by the intuitively powerful moral idea that afflicting another person (other than to avoid a greater harm) is always wrong. Attempts to close the gap have taken several different forms, and only one is discussed in this paper. This is the attempt to push aside the ‘protecting’ intuition, using some more powerful intuition specially invoked by the situations to which criminal justice is addressed. In one aspect of his complex defence of pure retributivism, Michael S. Moore attempts to show that the emotions of well-adjusted persons provide evidence of moral facts which justify the affliction of culpable wrongdoers in retribution for their wrongdoing. In particular, he appeals to the evidential significance of emotions aroused by especially heinous crimes, including the punishment-seeking guilt of the offender who truly confronts the reality of his immoral act. The paper argues that Moore fails to vindicate this appeal to moral realism, and thus to show that intrinsic personal moral desert (as distinct from ‘desert’ in a more restricted sense, relative to morally justified institutions) is a necessary and sufficient basis for punishment. Other theories of the role of emotions in morality are as defensible as Moore’s, while the compelling emotions to which he appeals to clinch his argument can be convincingly situated within a non-retributivist framework, especially when the distinction between the intuitions of the lawless world, and those of the world of law, is recognised.     

暂予监外执行的本质：功利人道与公正人道的统一——兼论我国暂予监外执行制度的完善

暂予监外执行是本应在监禁机构行刑的犯罪人暂时变更到监禁机构外进行刑罚执行，其本质特征应为行刑人道主义，行刑人道主义分为功利的人道与公正的人道两种不同理念。建议我国暂予监外执行制度变更为暂停监禁刑罚执行制度。在构建我国暂停监禁刑罚执行制度中，遇到保护个体的功利人道与保障社会整体的公正人道冲突时，应做出保障个体功利人道的价值选择。     

Punishment and Bad Upbringing

This article examines whether bad upbringing (or what is sometimes called a “rotten social background”) affects just or deserved punishment. There are two possible rationales for this claim. First, it may be argued that an offender’s blameworthiness for his choice to offend is reduced if he had a bad upbringing; second, it may be argued that fairness requires us to impose a less severe punitive burden on an offender with a bad upbringing, even if he is no less blameworthy for his crime. The article rejects both of these rationales.     

The Theory of the Offender's Forfeited Right

In justifying punishment we sometimes appeal to the idea that the punished offender has, by his criminal action against others, forfeited his moral right (and therefore his legal right) against hard treatment by the state. The imposition of suffering, or deprivation of liberty, loses its prima facie morally objectionable character, and becomes morally permissible.

Philosophers interrogating the forfeited right theory generally focus on whether the forfeiting of the right constitutes a necessary or a sufficient condition for punishment to be permissible; rarely do they ask whether the idea of a right that can be forfeited is itself morally illuminating. The article examines and criticizes various versions of this theory. It concludes that the forfeited right arguments add little other than rhetorical dignity to the existing repertoire of justifications for punishment. They can be most usefully understood as communicating the thought that the offender cannot reasonably complain about the violation of rights he himself has violated. But the incapacitation of the offender's reasonable complaint does not entail that we are justified in punishing him.     

Private prosecution in Singapore: understanding locus standi and measures in place to minimise abuse

In Singapore, as is the case with other commonwealth countries, the general rule is that once any offence has been committed, it is for the state to prosecute the alleged offender. This explains why Article 35(8) of the Constitution provides that ‘[t]he Attorney-General shall have power, exercisable at his discretion, to institute, conduct or discontinue any proceedings for any offence’. Article 35(8) is reinforced by section 11 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which provides that ‘[t]he Attorney-General shall be the Public Prosecutor and shall have the control and direction of criminal prosecutions and proceedings under this Code or any other written law’. However, as is the case with other commonwealth countries, the public prosecutor in Singapore does not have an exclusive right to prosecute. In some circumstances other government agencies or private individuals may institute and have instituted prosecutions. The purpose of this article is to discuss the issues of locus standi to institute a private prosecution and the measures in place in Singapore to minimise abusing the right to institute a private prosecution. In discussing these issues, the author, where necessary, compares the Singapore position with that of other commonwealth jurisdictions and makes recommendations on how legislation could be amended in Singapore to address some of the challenges.     

Why criminal harms matter: Plato’s abiding insight in the Laws

Commentators have contested the role of resulting harm in criminal law since the time of Plato. Unfortunately, they have neglected what may be not only the best discussion of the issue, but also the first—namely, Plato’s one-paragraph discussion in the Laws. Plato’s discussion succeeds in reconciling two, seemingly irreconcilable viewpoints that till now have been in stalemate. Thus, Plato reconciles the view, that an offender’s desert is solely a function of his subjective willingness to act in disregard of the legitimate interests of others, with the view that criminal sentences can appropriately be made to depend upon how indignant, angry, and upset society is at an offender based upon the results of his culpable conduct. In doing so, Plato casts light on retributive theories of punishment by suggesting that an adjudicator can be committed to retribution and yet rightly believe that it is inappropriate to give an offender the full punishment he deserves. He also lays a basis for the view that causation, rather being predicates for the just punishment of offenders toward whom the public is intuitively angry for harm, is the consequence of the public’s being intuitively angry at offenders for harm.

Rethinking The Ends of Harm

In The Ends of Harm, Victor Tadros claims that the general justifying aim of the criminal law should be general deterrence. He also takes seriously that we cannot use people as a means, and thus he argues that we may only punish people in the name of general deterrence who have a ‘duty’ to suffer. Tadros claims that this duty arises as follows: An offender initially has a duty not to harm the victim. If the offender violates that duty, the offender still has a duty to stop the harm from occurring (so that, for example, an offender would have to jump in front of his own bullet). And if the harm does occur, then the offender has a duty to rectify that harm. This duty to rectify, argues Tadros, requires the defendant not only to compensate the victim but also to protect the victim to the extent that he would have been able to have been harmed to prevent the threat from occurring. Tadros further advances intricate arguments for why the state may therefore punish the offender to protect other potential victims to the extent of the offender’s duty to rectify. This symposium contribution seeks to explore three problems with Tadros’ analysis, ultimately arguing that Tadros’ theory fails on its own terms. First, attempts present a substantial problem for Tadros’ regime because attempts do not give rise to duties to prevent harm because there is no harm to be prevented. Tadros’ attempt to account for attempts, as completed offenses of diversions of security resources, ultimately leads to punishments that bear little resemblance to the crime attempted. Such a wildly counterintuitive result creates problems for a regime premised on general deterrence, which must be understood and respected. Second, Tadros’ regime will often exempt the rich from suffering criminal punishment. Tadros claims that duties to prevent harms from occurring (by jumping in front of bullets) are only enforceable when compensation will be inadequate. However, affluent offenders may be able to fully compensate. Moreover, since the scope of the duty to suffer will be determined by what remains of the duty after the victim is compensated, affluent offenders will be able to compensate more and thereby suffer less. Again, the actual sentences will thereby bear little resemblance to the rationale for criminalization, thus threatening the deterrent message of the law. Moreover, a system that exacerbates distributive inequalities will not achieve public respect. Third, Tadros cannot justify taking the duty that the defendant owes to the victim and forcing the victim to transfer this asset to the state. In his quest to articulate a theory that does not impermissibly use defendants, he ultimately endorses a theory that impermissibly uses their victims. He thus fails to achieve the very goal he sets for himself, which is to achieve general deterrence without impermissibly using anyone.     

The Jolly Hangman, the Jailed Journalist, and the Decline of Singapore’s Death Penalty

British journalist Alan Shadrake was convicted of contempt of court in 2010 for writing a book about capital punishment in Singapore. This article uses that book and other sources to analyze four aspects of Singapore’s death penalty. It begins with a profile of Darshan Singh, the hangman who executed 1,000 persons over the past half-century. The article then shows that Singapore’s system of mandatory capital punishment does not produce consistency in death penalty decision-making. Next the article argues that the prosecution of Shadrake increased criticism of capital punishment in Singapore by propelling his book to bestseller status. This is followed by an explanation of why the number of persons executed in Singapore has declined in recent years, from an average of 66 per year in the mid-1990s to an average of 5 per year since 2004. The key proximate cause of this decline appears to be prosecutors, who can use their discretion to charge defendants for possessing amounts of heroin, cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine that are just under the thresholds for a mandatory death sentence. Capital punishment in Singapore is not really mandatory, and it cannot escape the problems of bias and arbitrariness that have long plagued discretionary death penalty systems in the United States, Japan, and other nations.     

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.     

刑法若干条款罪数形态之分析

《刑法》第120条第2款包含牵连犯的情形,实行数罪并罚;第157条的走私罪与妨碍公务罪构成牵连犯,应实行数罪并罚;第171条第3款中伪造货币并出售或者运输的,构成牵连犯,择一重罪从重处罚;伪造货币后使用自己伪造的货币,构成牵连犯,使用假币视为事后不可罚行为;第196条第3款中出于非法占有财物的目的,行窃中得到财物同时意外得到信用卡后使用的,应以盗窃罪和信用卡诈骗罪并罚;第198条第2款属于兼容犯,实行择一重罪从重处罚。     

胁从犯存废论

胁从犯是我国刑法特有的规定。胁从犯的存在有违背责任原则之虞,并且不利于"统一法秩序"的构建。基于心理动因、刑罚目的、谦抑精神、司法实践等方面的反思,当法律无法强求受胁迫者拒绝实施犯罪行为,亦即受胁迫者欠缺合法行为的期待可能性时,就不应追究受胁迫者的刑事责任。因此,胁从犯的规定是不必要的,可以考虑予以废除。     

汉初的刑罚体系

汉初的刑罚体系是文景刑制改革的基础,由“笞”、“罚”和作为正“刑”的各种肉刑、死刑组成。肉刑一般不单独运用,往往“刑尽”后,又罚使劳役。这样形成一个从轻到重,从生到死,相互衔接,有等次的刑罚统一体。过误、特殊的犯罪主体以及轻罪,适用“罚金”、“赎刑”。故意、重罪适用劳役、肉刑,直到死刑。文景改革以后,笞刑取代肉刑,劳役由无期变为有期。此外,汉初刑罚体系明显受先秦刑罚思想的影响,刑罚被视为对犯罪者的“报复”,有强烈的特殊预防和一般预防的色彩。     

论继承性共犯

继承性共犯,是指在先行为人已经实施了犯罪的手段行为或者结合犯的前一犯罪之后,以共同的犯罪故意单独或者帮助先行为人实施犯罪的目的行为或者结合犯的后一犯罪的犯罪人。继承性共犯只存在于两种犯罪形态中:一是由手段行为和目的行为结合而成的犯罪,二是结合犯。对继承性共犯应确定与被继承性共犯同样的罪名。     

Desert, Justice and Capital Punishment

Our purpose in this paper is to consider a procedural objection to the death penalty. According to this objection, even if the death penalty is deemed, substantively speaking, a morally acceptable punishment for at least some murderers, since only a small proportion of those guilty of aggravated murder are sentenced to death and executed, while the majority of murderers escape capital punishment as a result of arbitrariness and discrimination, capital punishment should be abolished. Our targets in this paper are two recent attempts, by Thomas Hurka and Michael Cholbi respectively, to defend the view that ‘levelling down’ (that is, reducing the punishment imposed on a criminal from the punishment he absolutely deserves to a less severe punishment in order to achieve proportionality relative to the criminals who have escaped the punishment they absolutely deserve) is, in the context of capital punishment, morally permissible. We argue that both Hurka and Cholbi fail to show why the arbitrariness and discrimination objection impugns the death penalty.

论我国未成年犯社区矫正的必要性及可行性

当前,我国未成年人犯罪数量快速增长,且再犯罪率很高,这表明传统的未成年犯矫正工作已不适应现在矫正工作的需要。对未成年犯进行社区矫正,是近年来世界各国刑罚执行制度的一个发展趋势。它彰显了人道主义和人文关怀精神,有利于对未成年犯的再社会化,能够有效地克服对未成年犯科以监禁刑罚所产生的弊端。从未成年犯社区矫正的基本概念入手,论述我国未成年犯适用社区矫正的必要性及可行性。     

The Duty to Protect the Victim – Or the Duty to Suffer Punishment?

This paper addresses The Ends of Harm by Victor Tadros. In it, I attempted to explore some of the implications of Tadros’s theory of punishment, particularly those following from the uneasy relationship between punishment of the offender (D) and D’s duty to protect the victim (V) from future harm. Among my concerns were: the apparent underinclusiveness of Tadros’s theory of punishment; the vague and unpredictable scope of D’s liabilities; the taking away by the state of V’s right to be protected; and the lack of inherent limitations on the appropriate forms and amounts of punishment. I also questioned the true meaning of the duty incurred by D as a result of D’s wrongdoing and suggested that protection of Vs from future harm may not be as essential to Tadros’s justification of punishment as he has argued.