Imprisonment and unemployment: A comment

The current state of research dealing with the relationship between the unemployment rate and the imprisonment rate is assessed, and directions for further research are suggested.     

Imprisonment and co-offending: results from a 10-year follow-up study

A recurring question in criminological research is whether prisoners meet new accomplices in prison. This article’s objective is to study co-offending among individuals who have served prison sentences. The frequency of co-offending among individuals who have been in the same prison at the same time will be examined. If gender, age, type of prison, offence type and prior experience of co-offending are significant for this type of co-offending will also be examined. The study population comprised all inmates released from a Swedish prison during a half year in 2001–2002 (n = 3.930). The follow-up period is 10 years. The results show that only 3% of those who have been in the same prison at the same time are suspected of committing offences together subsequent to release. The likelihood of being suspected of committing an offence together following the conclusion of a joint stay in the same prison is higher for those released from a closed prison who are aged 31–40, and who had committed large proportion of their offences together with others prior to the relevant prison sentence. The results suggest that the concept of criminal capital is not important for future co-offending after a joint stay in prison.     

Gendered Imprisonment in Japan: An Examination of Imprisonment for Stimulant Drug Offenses

Japan is well known not only as a society with low crime rates but also for using incarceration sparingly, sending few convicted offenders to prison. Yet, certain crimes, such as drug offenses, receive little leniency in the Japanese criminal justice system. Johnson (1996b) found empirical support for both chivalry and an ‘'evil woman'’ effect in the system's treatment of female drug offenders. This paper reexamines and extends the core issues in Johnson's (1996b) exploration of women's imprisonment in Japan. It traces the patterns in female incarceration where data are available from the postwar period until 2004. It specifically examines the incidences of incarceration of women for stimulant drug offenses and identifies key correlates on the macro‐level associated with changes in imprisonment practices.     

Humanising Imprisonment: A European project?

This paper focuses on the continued significance of human rights in the movement to develop a more comprehensive European framework to improve prison conditions. It identifies the immediate factors that underlie the movement as the successful implementation of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment; the growing number of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights applying the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms to prison matters; the expansion of the number of member states of the Council of Europe; and the increased political interest at European level in penological matters. Attention is also paid to the wider ideological role that a concern for human rights plays in European criminal justice politics. The paper illustrates the reform movement by focussing on recent recommendations of the Council of Europe on various aspects of imprisonment, including the new European Prison Rules. The possible emergence of an international instrument of treaty status that would deal directly with substantive conditions of imprisonment is noted and its potential impact considered. An argument is made for the systemisation of European prison law and for further reform initiatives.     

Governing Climate Change: Towards a New Paradigm for Risk Regulation

This article argues that the ascent of climate change on the EU regulatory agenda signals a new era of risk regulation and calls for the establishment of a new paradigm for risk regulation. Climate change is altering the EU's conception of environmental risks and its design of regulatory responses. In contrast to conventional risk regulation, climate change regulation must prioritise the risks of business‐as‐usual over the risks of change, must target systemic change instead of stability, and must favour the virtues of integration and orchestration over those of individualisation and compartmentalisation. There is an important role for risk regulation scholarship to analyse this shift and its consequences for regulation, such as the relocation of legitimacy needs and the emergence of new risks of regulatory failure. Such an enterprise would both reinvigorate risk regulation scholarship and offer a vital contribution to the European Union as it tackles the momentous challenge of climate change governance.     

'Manifest Madness': Towards a New Understanding of the Insanity Defence

This article introduces a new concept which can serve as a theoretical frame for understanding the way in which insanity is proved for the purposes of the criminal law. With reference to George Fletcher's concept of 'manifest criminality', it introduces the concept of 'manifest madness'. This concept constructs madness (a shorthand for the types of mental abnormality known to the criminal law as insanity) in criminal law as evident to lay observers, and its meanings, which are derived from collective knowledge of it, as encoded in the defendant's acts. Through an historical analysis of the way in which insanity has been proved in criminal law, the article argues that 'manifest madness' is useful for understanding how knowledge about insanity is structured in the criminal courtroom. The concept of 'manifest madness' provides a frame that incorporates evidentiary and procedural features of the insanity defence that have resisted systematic theoretical analysis.     

Putting Race and Gender Together: A New Approach To Intersectionality

European anti-discrimination legislation explicitly calls for member states to consider a legal response to multiple discrimination, either additive (arising from many grounds) or intersectional (a result of an interaction of grounds). In traditional Anglo-American anti-discrimination frameworks the structure of separate statutes forces complainants to choose one ground or another. In Britain, cases such as Nwoke v Government Legal Service indicate a judicial willingness to recognise additive discrimination, while cases such as Bahl highlight the difficulties of dealing with intersectionality. This article suggests that to overcome current difficulties with intersectional discrimination, first the qualitative difference of intersectional claims must be clarified; secondly, the logic of immutability underlying grounds must be replaced by one which accommodates intersectionality; and thirdly, a method is required which enables courts systematically to incorporate social context into judicial decision-making. With these three changes, the qualitative difference of intersectionality can be both understood and activated in the courts.     

Crime and Imprisonment Trends: An Analysis by Individual Crime-Types

This research was done while the author was visiting the Max-Planck-Institut, Freiburg, West Germany. Thanks are due to the Humboldt Foundation for a Fellowship, and to Baruch College for a Scholar Incentive leave of absence that made this research possible.

In this paper, the relationship between crime and imprisonment rates is explored in more detail by examining the rates for individual crime types. Given the observation that aggregate crime rates have increased far more rapidly than imprisonment rates in many countries, the possible existence of an adaptive mechanism is explored, where the imprisonment rates increase with the crime rates for serious offenses but not for minor offenses. Analysis of data from West Germany appears to support such a hypothesis.     

死缓、无期徒刑减为有期徒刑之刑期折抵

按照我国当前司法实践中的做法,被判处死缓或无期徒刑而后减为有期徒刑的受刑人,原未决羁押期不予折抵减刑后的刑期;如此做法不仅违背了现行刑期折抵立法及其相关司法解释的规定,而且也背离了刑期折抵立法的价值取向和刑法公平公正的精神;基于依法出台的相关司法解释已被不当废止之现状及我国司法人员惯于对司法解释的依赖,有必要重以适当方式明确其折抵问题.     

Theorizing the Third Way: Qualified Consequentialism, the Proportionality Principle, and the New Social Democracy

The third way (or new social democracy) occupies a place of prominence in the contemporary political landscape. But it requires, according to one of its leading proponents, Anthony Giddens, theoretical elaboration. In this essay, the third way is identified as being informed by a form of moral philosophy to which the name qualified consequentialism is given. Further, the proportionality principle and associated case law are identified as yielding guidance on how to operationalize qualified consequentialist moral philosophy. Qualified consequentialism is also identified as being open to the criticism that it is insensitive to the interests of individuals. Hence, its application in contexts like the criminal justice system and the workplace can be expected to attract criticism. Finally, the third way is distinguished from earlier (classical) forms of social democratic thought. This is because the new social democracy is not, unlike earlier variants, strongly oriented towards the radical alteration of the liberal societies in which it has gained currency.