Ethics in Criminal Justice: John Dewey Revisited

John Dewey has much to say to contemporary criminal justice educational strategies, particularly in respect to broadening the curriculum to include exposure to the humanities, values exploration, and moral decision-making. The case study method, coupled with Socratic teaching use of varied materials from the humanities, can approach an optimal learning experience within the Dewayan model. This educational model is offered in response to the calls for sensitive, holistic criminal justice practitioners in the modern age.     

Support for Harsh Criminal Sanctions and Criminal Justice Beliefs: A Social Dominance Perspective

Much of the criminal justice literature indicates that people’s support for harsh criminal sanctions such as the death penalty is strongly related to their beliefs about deterrence and their beliefs about retribution. In this paper, using social dominance theory as our organizing framework, we expand upon this literature by showing that social dominance orientation (SDO) is also related to support for harsh criminal sanctions, as well as to deterrence and retribution beliefs. In addition, we show that the relationships between SDO, on the one hand, and support for various forms of severe criminal sanctions, on the other, are mediated by deterrence and retribution beliefs.

Family Peacemaking with an Interdisciplinary Team: A Therapist's Perspective

Interdisciplinary teams provide an unparalleled opportunity for peacemaking in families within the consensual dispute resolution continuum. This interdisciplinary environment was born out of the integration of Collaborative Law, in which lawyers limit the scope of their services to settlement by way of a signed agreement, and Collaborative Divorce, a team approach to divorce services that includes a lawyer for each party along with a Collaborative Divorce Coach for each party, a neutral financial specialist, and a neutral child specialist. Taken together, Interdisciplinary Collaborative Practice supports the resolution of legal issues out of court as well as addressing any emotional, relational, or behavioral problems that create obstacles to the successful resolution of the separation process.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Collaborative Practice creates legal representation in a consensual environment limiting services to settlement negotiations by way of a written agreement.
• The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals includes 5,000 members in twenty‐five countries.
• Legal representation in a consensual environment together with interdisciplinary teams create endless possibilities for dispute resolution processes.
• Collaborative Lawyers, Collaborative Divorce Coaches, child specialists, and financial specialists can create custom‐fit interdisciplinary teams that work together out of court to support families through marital transition.
• Interdisciplinary teams are family centric, bridging appropriate disciplines and resources to the needs of the family to address the vast majority of divorce‐related problems.
• Divorcing families are moving targets, learning and evolving through the process.
• Therapeutic teams support families with more complex relational, emotional, and mental health problems to find resolutions out of court.
• Divorce is a mainstream event in Western culture; we need supportive processes to encourage the best possible outcomes for all family members, especially the children.

     

DNA in the Criminal Justice System: The DNA Success Story in Perspective,

Current figures on the efficiency of DNA as an investigative tool in criminal investigations only tell part of the story. To get the DNA success story in the right perspective, we examined all forensic reports from serious (N = 116) and high‐volume crime cases (N = 2791) over the year 2011 from one police region in the Netherlands. These data show that 38% of analyzed serious crime traces (N = 384) and 17% of analyzed high‐volume crime traces (N = 386) did not result in a DNA profile. Turnaround times (from crime scene to DNA report) were 66 days for traces from serious crimes and 44 days for traces from high‐volume crimes. Suspects were truly identified through a match with the Offender DNA database of the Netherlands in 3% of the serious crime cases and in 1% of the high‐volume crime cases. These data are important for both the forensic laboratory and the professionals in the criminal justice system to further optimize forensic DNA testing as an investigative tool.     

Battered Women and the Criminal Justice System: The Service Providers' Perspective

This article reports on a study of the service providers' perspective on what battered women face when entering the criminal justice system. Victim non-co-operation with the system can manifest itself in various ways and at several points in the process. The article begins with a review of the available literature on the criminal justice system's responses to women battering. Then the experiences and perceptions of service providers in Ohio concerning these responses are described, and, consequently, the findings according to factors which may affect service providers responses are analyzed. The article concludes with an assessment of the policy implications of the system's response to women battering.     

国际视野下的宽严相济刑事政策

近期国际刑事政策的发展趋势是实行轻轻重重的两极化刑事政策.我国宽严相济的刑事政策是在"严"占主角、"宽"为配角的重刑结构下,作为对"严打"方针的反思而提出的,当前是一项刑事司法政策.其内涵虽与两极化刑事政策有差异,但对犯罪采取区别对待的灵活精神与两极化刑事政策相符合.在"严"的重刑结构下,要发挥"宽"这个配角的作用,只能以司法努力,尽可能多地拓展"宽"的空间和份额.应以"量刑"(裁判)这个司法中心环节为基点,向"量刑"(裁判)的前、后两个阶段和领域进行扩展.     

Race,Crime, and Criminal Justice

Fifty years ago, the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson did not frequently mention race and ethnicity in its discussion of and recommendations for the criminal justice system, but it did have a lot to say about race and crime. Through the use of arrest rates to measure racial differentials in criminal involvement, the Commission concluded that Blacks commit more crime as a consequence of Black people living in greater numbers in criminogenic “slum” conditions. To address racial differences, the Commission favored the Great Society programs of Johnson's War on Poverty. Contemporary criminologists continue to debate the racial distribution of crime, the causes of crimes, and the best policies to reduce crime and racial differentials. The Commission did not anticipate the current debate among scholars regarding how much racial disproportionality exists in the criminal justice system and its causes and consequences. The policies that led to mass incarceration have been significant drivers of continued criminal justice racial disparity. Those policies are inconsistent with the recommendation in The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967), upending the pursuit of a more fair and just system.     

协商性司法——德国刑事程序中的辩诉交易？

一、德国协商性司法简介 近年来,德国刑事司法的实施状况经历了剧烈的变化.指控、量刑与案件处理中的协商已经成为普遍存在的现象,尽管这些协商实践曾被认为与德国刑事程序中的若干诉讼原则与司法传统是相抵牾的.     

Socially Appraising Justice: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

The impact and effectiveness of organizational justice efforts vary across cultures. Previous justice research has focused on such themes as outcome allocation, process criteria, allocation control, and decision justification largely from a Western point of view. This paper analyzes organizational justice perceptions from a cross-cultural perspective. More specifically, using the Hofstede cultural dimensions (individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and power distance), key justice areas are examined. Further, predictions as to the general salience of key justice areas are offered relative to a national culture's overall organizational justice preferences and tendencies.     

Corrective Justice as A Principle of Criminal Law: A Prolegomenon

This article argues that corrective justice is an adequate principle of criminalization. On my interpretation, corrective justice holds that, in order for an action to count as a crime, there needs to be a plausible normative story about an offender having violated the interests of a victim in a way that disturbs their relationship as equal persons and a subsequent story about responding to crime in a way that corrects this disturbance. More specifically, I claim that corrective justice is concerned with the protection of interests that persons have in owning private goods throughout standard interactions with other persons. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I specify the subject-matter that principles of criminal law need to ground and provide an outline of the idea of corrective justice. Second, I show that corrective justice can account for the main cases of crime and the salient modes of criminal responsibility. I also argue that corrective justice can make sense of two prima facie recalcitrant types of cases (rape and inchoate offenses). Third, and finally, I address two objections to my corrective justice theory of criminal law. The first concerns the implications corrective justice has for locating criminal law along the private/public law divide. The second objection raises the putatively problematic consequences corrective justice has for understanding the separation between criminal and civil law.     

Aquatic Crime: A New Horizon in Criminal Justice Research

This article focuses upon a relatively unexplored area of criminal activity, namely, aquatic or water based criminal activity. The specific concern is the need to focus upon the vast domain of water, engulfing over two-thirds of the earth's surface, in understanding and expaining many forms of intranational and international criminality. Emphasis is placed upon the need for comprehensive research in order to fill a void in criminological theory and to generate a better understanding of the potential of aquatic environments in promoting and concealing criminal activity. Moreover, comprehensive research is essential in order to promote a realistic assessment of the nature and extent of aquatic crime and to improve our ability to effectively combat such activity.     

金融公正理念的法学阐释

资本扩张所导致的金融危机与两极分化,将弘扬自由与平等为主旨的金融法拖入了目标和现实相背离的现代性悖论之中。从公正理念的维度,重新审视现代金融法的价值取向与功能定位,对于缓解法的服从性与正当性之间的紧张关系,以及维护法的权威性具有重要意义。推进中国金融法制的现代化进程,须对西方的现代性范式扬善抑恶,以求实现金融自由与社会秩序的良性互动。     

论我国刑事司法制度的改革与完善——从构建和谐社会的角度

一、刑事司法:构建和谐社会的法治基石党的十六届四中全会关于“不断提高构建社会主义和谐社会的能力”的建设目标一经提出,立即引起社会各界的高度关注,因为实现社会和谐,建设美好社会,始终是人类孜孜以求的一个崇高理想。刑事司法这个保障公平正义的最后一道防线,不仅是处理我国经济转轨时期大量的严重矛盾的关键途径,而且在更高层面上还是构建社会主义和谐社会的法治基石,起到了打击犯罪、稳定社会、保障人权、缓和矛盾的重要作用。刑事司法的基本功能之一就是打击犯罪、维护社会秩序和公共安全,而这正是为了保障社会生活的和谐。建国以…     

Review of Heng Choon (Oliver) Chan,Samuel M. Y. Ho,Psycho-Criminological Perspective of Criminal Justice in Asia

Asian Journal of Criminology -     

How to do things on purpose: R. A. Duff'sIntention,Agency, and Criminal Liability

Conclusion There is a lot of material in this book, and Duff handles most of it very well. It is unfortunate that he felt the need to tie his discussion of serious philosophical questions in the criminal law to larger overarching questions of philosophy. It is possible that current conceptions of intentional action implicate dualism (or Dualism), I suppose, but that would be a book-length discussion all of its own. It would begin with a careful discussion of just what dualism is, and would track down the various ways in which particular substantive positions on intentional action rule out alternatives to dualism. Such a work might be interesting indeed. It would be interesting, for example, to see a discussion of a type of conceptual dualism that I suspect Duff would find congenial: a dualism that insisted upon the autonomy of purposive notions and rejected the causal analysis of intentional action. Would that sort of dualism make any difference at all for the criminal law? It might, and it might not. But in any event that is not what we find in this book, which, for all of its healthy enthusiasm for the place of philosophy in the law shows an excessive tolerance for makeweight arguments about the great questions.