Differences in attitudes toward gays and lesbians among criminal justice and non-criminal justice majors

The criminal justice system is supposed to protect and serve all members of the community equally; therefore, any prejudicial attitudes harbored by criminal justice students may negatively impact their job performance as future justice professionals. Four hundred and eighty-four students at a large Midwestern university were surveyed on their views toward gay and lesbian persons and issues. The responses of criminal justice majors were compared to the responses of students majoring in other fields. Criminal justice majors tended to have more negative views of gays and lesbians than students in other majors. However, there was not a significant difference between the two groups of students in their willingness to extend rights to and socialize with gay and lesbian individuals.     

Representing Theory and Theorising in Criminal Justice Studies: Practising Theory Considered

The author considers the role and place of theory in criminal justice studies. The argument is that the operation and interrogation of fundamental categories is integral to social scientific enquiry and if criminal justice studies is to resist a technocratic “protective service” orientation it must promote theorising and thinking conceptually via the texts which represent the discipline to undergraduates. Although theory is situated at the core of social science curricula, there is little or no agreement on its role or place in research and pedagogy. The dominant understanding of theory within criminal justice studies (including its sociological and criminological incarnation) is that it is something to be referred to. What is seldom emphasised in theory or methods texts is the practice of theorising. Texts that are designed to be the student’s first contact with the field of criminal justice studies, and which reflect broader attitudes toward social enquiry, seldom consider the methodological and pedagogical issues related to the production and role of analytic concepts and do not present social science as an imaginative or reflexive practice. Drawing on critical realist metatheory, this paper advances a distinction between social and sociological problems and social science and protective service toward illustrating that a social science approach to the study of criminal justice demands the operation and interrogation of analytic categories and explicit consideration of issues of epistemology and ontology. Works which seek to avoid this serve only to foster a passive rather than active engagement with their subject matter.     

Literature in criminal justice education

Although generally accepted as an interdisciplinary field, criminal justice has focused on the social sciences. Criminal justice education, if it is to remain vital and growing, has to experiment with courses involving material beyond the social sciences. Using examples found in many law schools, criminal justice instructors can employ the art or humanity of literature in their classes. Fiction, especially short stories and one-act dramas, can be inserted into core courses or used as the basis for a special course on criminal justice and literature. The new approach offered by literature encourages students to reexamine various aspects of the criminal justice system.     

Teaching critical crimimology and critical justice studies in Canada

This paper explores four problems in relation to teaching critical criminology. First, it argues that use of the label critical criminology is misleading because it sometimes creates the impression that antagonistic theoretical perspectives are similar. Second, it profiles the student audience for criminology courses in Canada, arguing that students in different programmes and with different social backgrounds present instructors with different teaching problems. Third, it reviews some of the more recent criminology and criminal justice texts and suggests that some may not be suitable for students taking their first course in criminology or criminal justice. Fourth, it reviews a particular teaching strategy to deal with various teaching situations and suggests that an interactive, comparative teaching model might be the best method when teaching controversial perspectives. Revision of paper presented to Learned Society Meetings, Quebec City, June, 1989.     

新自由主义对美英国家刑事法制的影响及反思

从一国或地区的政治经济体制来理解其刑事法制,可以以相对宏观的视角把握其刑事法制脉络。美国刑事法制自20世纪70年代以来发生了深刻变化,从刑事法制基本观念到具体实践都渗透强烈的报应主义色彩,而隐藏其后则是新自由主义思潮。美国刑事法制的转变也影响着英国等国家。对这一思潮进行研究,一方面可以对这些国家刑事法制过去半个世纪发展脉络进行整体把握,另一方面也为分析研究这些国家刑事法制提供了一个更具批判性的视角。     

Engaging students on the topic of restorative justice and serious offenses

Within contemporary society, there is a prevailing sentiment that our criminal justice system leaves much to be desired in its responses to the offender, the victim, and the community. As a potential answer to these conceded shortcomings, restorative justice has earned significant recognition and consideration. While restorative justice principles and programs have received increasing support, for many individuals this is limited to cases involving relatively ‘minor,’ first time, and/or juvenile offenses. When it comes to situations with more ‘serious’ and violent offenses, acceptance of restorative responses dissipates. Gaining broader acceptance can be particularly challenging with current college students. With many students raised in the ‘get tough on crime’ era, embracing this alternative approach to serious crimes can be a difficult paradigm shift. This article will provide a framework for approaching the feasibility of applying restorative justice with serious offenses in the college course. In addition, suggestions for readings, projects, and assignments that will further assist in effectively engaging students with these issues will be provided.     

Patent first, ask questions later: morality and biotechnology in patent law

This Article explores the U.S. "patent first, ask questions later" approach to determining what subject matter should receive patent protection. Under this approach, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or the Agency) issues patents on "anything under the sun made by man," and to the extent a patent's subject matter is sufficiently controversial, Congress acts retrospectively in assessing whether patents should issue on such interventions. This practice has important ramifications for morally controversial biotechnology patents specifically, and for American society generally. For many years a judicially created "moral utility" doctrine served as a type of gatekeeper of patent subject matter eligibility. The doctrine allowed both the USTPO and courts to deny patents on morally controversial subject matter under the fiction that such inventions were not "useful." The gate, however, is currently untended. A combination of the demise of the moral utility doctrine, along with expansive judicial interpretations of the scope of patent-eligible subject matter, has resulted in virtually no basis on which the USTPO or courts can deny patent protection to morally controversial, but otherwise patentable, subject matter. This is so despite position statements by the Agency to the contrary. Biotechnology is an area in which many morally controversial inventions are generated. Congress has been in react-mode following the issuance of a stream of morally controversial biotech patents, including patents on transgenic animals, surgical methods, and methods of cloning humans. With no statutory limits on patent eligibility, and with myriad concerns complicating congressional action following a patent's issuance, it is not Congress, the representative of the people, determining patent eligibility. Instead, it is patent applicants, scientific inventors, who are deciding matters of high public policy through the contents of the applications they file with the USTPO. This Article explores how the United States has come to be in this position, exposes latent problems with the "patent first" approach, and considers the benefits and disadvantages of the "ask questions first, patents later" approaches employed by some other countries. The Article concludes that granting patents on morally controversial biotech subject matter and then asking whether such inventions should be patentable is bad policy for the United States and its patent system, and posits workable, proactive ways for Congress to successfully guard the patent-eligibility gate.     

Accreditation: Is it necessary? Yes!

Few issues in the past decade have aroused the interest of the criminal justice education community as much as accreditation. What accreditation of criminal justice educational programs can and cannot do is currently the subject of national debate. The goals of criminal justice accreditation, the organization of the Criminal Justice Accreditation Council that administers the accreditation project, the costs involved, and the development of accreditation guidelines are analyzed in the following article. The potential advantages and possible pitfalls of accreditation are reviewed, as are some of the legal problems in the accreditation process, such as the confidentiality of accreditation decisions.My purposes in writing this article are (1) to analyze the criminal justice accreditation efforts to date, (2) to present and to expand on the serious issues facing criminal justice education and how these are related to the desirability of having accreditation, and (3) to reflect on the problems thwarting the attempts of criminal justice education to move into a strong accrediting position. This report is meant to provide information, both general and specific, to those in all fields of education who are interested in improving criminal justice education. It is intended to stimulate thought as well as to give this writer's perspective on the accreditation efforts currently being carried out by the Criminal Justice Accreditation Council (CJAC) under the overall leadership of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS). Educators and administrators often discuss accreditation in relation to their programs. Perhaps this article will clarify some of the issues and encourage a responsible approach to the improvement of criminal justice education.     

Criminal Justice Through “Colorblind” Lenses: A Call to Examine the Mutual Constitution of Race and Criminal Justice

A central paradox defines the scholarship of criminal justice and race: while racial disparities manifest throughout the criminal justice system, it is often portrayed as race‐neutral. We identify two central paradigm shifts: one in penology (that focuses on risk) and one in racial ideology (that focuses on colorblindness) that create a perfect storm; criminal justice apparatuses produce an illusion of racial neutrality while exacerbating racial disproportionality. We join an expanding list of scholars encouraging discourse that engages critical race theory on an empirical level and import this approach to the consideration of race within the criminal justice system. We identify issues with the conceptualization and operationalization of race as a variable within criminal justice research and recommend that scholars consider the mutual constitution of race and criminal justice. That is, scholarship must examine and empirically measure how race and criminal justice institutions actively form and inform each other.     

When Public Protection Becomes Punishment? The UK Use of Civil Measures to Contain the Sex Offender

In keeping with many countries the UK has moved the problem of sexual offending up the political agenda. On the criminal justice side sentences have been increased and supervision periods extended. On the civil side a raft of new measures have been put in place to regulate the behaviour of sex offenders in the interest of community safety and child protection; this paper examines these measures and, in particular takes the sex offender ‘register’ as a case study to show how political imperatives have been brought to bear with little reference to the research or professional views of practitioners in this area. It is contended that under these political pressures, what starts life as a preventive, regulatory measure can easily become a more punitive measure in its own right; as such it may be liable to challenge by those subject to it for failing to fulfil its primary purpose and for straying across a line between the civil and criminal aspects of intervention.     

Student Perceptions of Juvenile Offender Accounts in Criminal Justice Education

In criminal justice programs, a major teaching objective is to expose students to the wide range of experiences and career paths available in criminal justice. Technological advances increase instructional strategies so that students may gain more realistic educational experience and correct erroneous perceptions about the criminal justice system. This paper describes one such strategy for online criminal justice students, a virtual prison tour, founded on the principles of social learning, experiential learning, and e-learning. In an upperclass course in juvenile delinquency, 43 students viewed a video of incarcerated juvenile offenders recounting their experiences of institutionalization, sentences, challenges, programming, and fears upon release. Student responses to seven quantitative questions and one qualitative question revealed that the video greatly impacted their attitudes, understanding, and perceptions of the juvenile justice system and provided pedagogical benefits. This strategy can be used to help criminal justice educators enhance student learning so that students experience a major aspect of the juvenile justice system.     

Integrating the study of criminal justice and literature

The best interdisciplinary courses are those that not only expand a student’s consciousness but also increase a student’s options. A course in criminal justice and literature can give criminal justice students a broader philosophical basis for work in their profession and metaphors for understanding their discipline. For humanities students, it can reveal the extent to which literature reflects social conditions and criminal justice theories and practices. With this in mind, the authors, professors of criminal justice and English, respectively, designed and taught an experimental course that integrates topics in criminal justice with topics in literature. This article details the philosophies and goals behind this undertaking and describes the specific course objectives, readings and other instructional materials used, and the teaching methods and evaluation procedures employed. Also included are the results of a research survey which explored student perceptions of and reactions to the course. The article concludes by offering suggestions and cautionary advice that would be helpful for those interested in setting up such a curriculum.     

JAILS AND SERVICES FOR INMATES A Perspective on Some Critical Issues

The nature and scope of the jail role within the criminal justice system is explored. Questions are raised as to the types of functions which jails should perform, the appropriateness of jail services, and alternatives for the administration of jails. The authors suggest that solutions to the various issues require active involvement of an informed public providing policy direction to the criminal justice system. The paper concludes by observing that many of these critical jail issues can find satisfactory solution when there is a joint commitment on the part of practitioners, researchers, and the community sector to actively seek answers.     

Teaching Criminological Theory: The Power of Film and Music

Interest in utilizing pop culture as a means of teaching and enhancing students’ understanding of complex or abstract ideas in the classroom has increased over the course of the past decade. This includes the use of film, television, fiction books, the internet, and music. The fields of criminology and criminal justice have also increasingly noted the value of using such means to teach about atrocities such as state crime, transnational crime and corporate crimes as well as issues of inequality, racism, and classism. Film, music and television can also be great tools to enhance the understanding of and ability to apply criminological theory. Most articles that have focused on incorporating the use of a ‘popular criminology’ within the classroom, however, have concentrated on one form or another of ‘pop culture’ (i.e., film). This article seeks to add to the existing literature by providing an example of how the use of film combined with music can not only enhance undergraduate criminology and criminal justice students’ ability to grasp criminological theory and apply it in their everyday lives, but also can be utilized as tools for exams.     

Where Do They Belong? Giving Victims a Place in the Criminal Justice Process

Historically, victims once had an active participatory role in the criminal justice process and were responsible for not only initiating but also for prosecuting offenders. In common law countries, victims were gradually sidelined and by the 20th century, their role was reduced to that of a witness to a crime against the state. The exclusion of victims from the criminal justice process is a major source of dissatisfaction for victims as many of them want to participate in the criminal justice process. This has fuelled initiatives with restorative justice that claim to more fully include victims than conventional criminal justice. This paper examines three different approaches found in the literature on how to let victims participate. One view is that victims should leave the criminal justice system and that criminal justice should be replaced by alternative, restorative justice schemes in which victims are granted full recognition and respect for their dignity. A second approach is to integrate restorative practices such as victim-offender mediation in the criminal justice process. The third approach is to integrate victim participation and respect (so-called restorative values) in the criminal justice system. These three approaches are discussed and compared with one another. The paper closes with recommendations for criminal law reform.     

How Is Criminal Justice Related to the Rest of Justice?

Are principles of criminal justice derived from a broader conception of justice, or does criminal justice involve some of its own distinctive principles such that it is not—for example—an aspect of distributive justice? Examining considerations regarding luck and desert provides an illuminating approach to this issue. The notion of desert has largely been excised from a great deal of recent political theorizing, and in particular, it has been eliminated from many influential conceptions of distributive justice. It is widely held that the pervasiveness of luck renders desert inappropriate to contexts of distributive justice, and incompatible with the freedom and equality of persons in a just political community. Should considerations of desert also have a minimal role in criminal justice—where they seem to still be important? Are considerations of desert in the context of criminal justice consistent with persons being free and equal participants in a just political community? How are principles of criminal justice related to principles of distributive justice and political justice in an overall just society? Many scholars agree that criminal justice presupposes an adequately just society. Still, that leaves open just how criminal justice relates to justice overall. That is the present topic.     

Toward undergraduate education in the interface of mental health and criminal justice

The relationship between the mental health and criminal justice systems is a controversial one and of growing importance. Formal education in the interface of mental health and criminal justice is a prerequisite to progress in this area. While some educational opportunities are currently available on the graduate and post-graduate levels, there appears to be no reason for this restriction. The present paper describes an undergraduate course on the interface of mental health and criminal justice, and analyzes its contribution to the field in terms of priming future graduate and law students for specializing in this area.     

刑法解释的基本思想及主体

在刑法解释的基本思想上 ,学术界存在主观说、客观说与折衷说的论争 ,本文通过对其主要观点的述评 ,从法律文本与立法原意的关系 ,客观说与罪刑法定的关系 ,刑法的安全价值与公平价值的利益比较三方面论证了客观说的合理性 ,同时也对传统的客观说进行了修正。关于刑法解释的主体 ,本文从刑法解释的基本思想入手 ,结合现代刑法理论和司法实践 ,指出刑法解释的主体仅限于可作出规范性解释的最高人民法院和作出个案解释的各级审判委员会和法官。     

Expediency,Legitimacy, and the Rule of Law: A Systems Perspective on Civil/Criminal Procedural Hybrids

In recent years an increasing quantity of UK legislation has introduced blended or ‘hybridised’ procedures that blur the previously clear demarcation between civil and criminal legal processes, typically on the grounds of normatively-motivated political expediency. This paper provides a critical perspective on instances of procedural hybridisation in order to illustrate that, first, the reliance upon civil law measures to remedy criminal law infractions can raise human rights issues and, second, that such instrumental criminal justice strategies deliberately circumvent the enhanced procedural protections of the criminal law. By conceptualising the rule of law as a structural coupling between the political and legal systems, and due process rights as necessary and self-imposed limitations upon systemic operations, this paper employs a systems-theoretical approach to critique this balancing act between expediency and principle, and queries the circumstances under which legislation contravening the rule of law can be said to lack legitimacy.     

社区司法与刑事司法的双系耦合简

社区司法作为社区主导下的新型司法范式，因为其融法律与道德、实体与程序、惩罚与矫正、恢复与救助、协商与调解等复合功能，在完善基层民主治理方式和凝结社区核心价值方面具有独特的优势。由于社区司法与国家刑事司法在处理犯罪问题上具有不同的操作向度，彼此间互有分工又互有联系，因此构成双系耦合。作为调处社会矛盾的自治型司法机制，中国社区司法的模式和运行系统亟待适应当地文化进行创新和发展。社区司法中“社区”在司法活动中应处于基础性地位，且主导基于社区的各种司法形式的运作。