Deconstructing the Hustle: Investigating the Meanings of Hustling Within the Carceral State

Critical Criminology - This article describes the ways in which the formerly incarcerated participants understand “hustling” and the “hustle.” Based on ethnographic...     

Interrogating the Criminalisation of Same-Sex Sexual Activity: A Study of Commonwealth Africa

Liverpool Law Review - The Abrahamic faiths and received colonial law have been identified as the driving force behind the criminalisation of homosexual activity in most of the Commonwealth States...     

Carceral feminisms: the abolitionist project and undoing dominant feminisms

In this article we explore the intersections between white liberal feminisms and the carceral state, particularly within nonprofit agencies. We find a strong collusion between ‘dominating feminisms’ and the carceral state, through funding structures and the belief that the legal system can provide protection to victimized women. We use evidence from our own research on rape crisis centers and gender-responsive programming for criminalized women, respectively, to investigate how some nonprofit agencies further threaten the safety, stability, and self-determination of women of color, queer women, transgendered clients, economically disadvantaged women, and disabled women. As a result, when white liberal feminists seek to intervene in the criminal legal system, we often see reform efforts that directly strengthen institutions that perpetuate economic exploitation, colonialist notions of progress, and white supremacy. We conclude our article with an exploration of some guiding principles within noncarceral antiviolence organizations that espouse a liberatory feminist framework.     

Reentry Within the Carceral: Foucault, Race and Prisoner Reentry

Early research on prisoner reentry was largely practical and applied, oriented to policymakers responding to the myriad challenges presented by having millions of people leaving prisons and jails each year. More recently, scholars have drawn on critical theoretical frameworks to reformulate the problem as bound up with large-scale shifts in the nature of social control (Wacquant in Dialect Anthropol 34(4):605–620, 2010a), deep racial divisions (Nixon et al. in Race/Ethnicity: Multidiscip Glob Contexts 2(1):21–43, 2008), and transformations of the United States political economy (Hallett in Crit Criminol. doi:10.1007/s10612-011-9138-8, 2011). This paper continues the work of theoretical elaboration through two avenues: (1) examining the contribution that Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish can make to the conceptual development of reentry scholarship, and (2) reworking Foucauldian concepts and themes important to the study of reentry to account for their racialized characteristics.     

论聚众淫乱的罪与罚——简析换偶行为的法律定性

聚众淫乱和换偶行为都是违反道德并与性有关的行为.非聚众的私密性换偶不是聚众淫乱,是纯粹意义上的换偶,聚众性换偶是换偶更是淫乱.聚众淫乱和非聚众私密性换偶在行为性质、行为结构方式及对社会的影响等方面有所不同,《刑法》对二者的评价也不同.聚众淫乱是犯罪,只有在人性中寻找合理性依据,没有合法存在的空间,是性混乱.非聚众的私密性换偶可以从人性中寻找合理性依据,是性交换,除去我国《刑法》规定的三种情形外,都不是犯罪行为.目前《刑法》规定的聚众淫乱罪比较合理,没有取消和修改的必要.     

轻罪重判国家赔偿责任的证立及其类型化

刑事审判实践中,对于轻罪重判是否赔偿,处理结果不一,原因在于对《国家赔偿法》第17条第(三)项以及最高人民法院、最高人民检察院《关于办理刑事赔偿案件适用法律若干问题的解释》第6条的不同理解。轻罪重判是对权利的侵害,在加强人权司法保障、强化权力运行制约监督的时代背景下,应该对《国家赔偿法》立法原意予以检讨,对轻罪重判的被告人予以赔偿。制度操作上,可以将轻罪重判的赔偿分为管制的赔偿、有期徒刑改判较短期限的赔偿、重判死刑且已执行的赔偿以及轻罪重判附加刑的赔偿,在此类型化区分的基础上对赔偿的项目、赔偿的方式以及计算标准进行设计。     

Mos Geometricus and the Common Law Mind: Interrogating Contract Theory

Euclidian theories have it that there exist one or a small number of apex principles from which the entire fasciculus of rules of contract law can be logically deduced. Two arguments are marshalled against the Euclidian project. First, that it has been unsuccessfully attempted before – in the form of the nineteenth century contract law treatise which emulated the civil lawyer's rationalistic model, mos geometricus – cautioning us against setting much store by its present reincarnation. Second, that the common law's methodology makes it resistant to this form of theorising. Euclidian theory presupposes a picture of rules on which: a) cases involve an application of logically prior rules; b) rules are reliably identifiable by different actors in the legal system; and c) rules normatively range over an indefinite spectrum of future cases. It will be argued that the common law defies this picture of rules thus rendering Euclidian theory analytically impossible.     

Punishment and Welfare:

This paper will attempt to situate the current discourse on 'crack pregnancies' within the context of a broader regulatory discourse.' It will argue that defining and locating state intervention solely within the confines of formal legal discourse not only privileges the criminal law, but (1) occludes recognition of the ways in which regulation and control are effected by administrative law and welfare policy and (2) fails to specify the role of the welfare state in the construction and reproduction of dominant cultural norms of womanhood and mothering. The paper draws on feminist literature and fieldwork-in-progress to suggest that many of these women are already subject to substantial mechanisms of social control and cultural reproduction. In concluding, it is suggested that the construction of this debate to date has served to deflect attention away from the fissures of gender, race and class that render these women's lives as publicly problematic.     

Intersectional Criminology: Interrogating Identity and Power in Criminological Research and Theory

Intersectional criminology is a theoretical approach that necessitates a critical reflection on the impact of interconnected identities and statuses of individuals and groups in relation to their experiences with crime, the social control of crime, and any crime-related issues. This approach is grounded in intersectionality, a concept developed from the tenets of women of color feminist theory and activism. To demonstrate how intersectionality is useful in criminology, this article reviews a sampling of feminist and critical research conducted on Black girls’ and women’s experiences with crime, victimization, and criminal legal system processes. This research demonstrates the interlaced social impacts of race, gender, femininity/masculinity ideals, sexuality, and socioeconomic class. This article also provides a basis for widely deploying an intersectional approach throughout the field of criminology across all social identities and statuses.     

关于建立侦查讯问中律师在场制度的尝试与思考

业已进行的讯问犯罪嫌疑人律师在场制度的试验表明:犯罪嫌疑人对此一般表示欢迎,他们在侦查中形成的口供比较稳定,此后没有翻供现象;而另一组没有律师参加讯问的犯罪嫌疑人,侦查终结后有的人进行翻供,并把原因归咎于侦查人员的不当讯问。同时,大多数侦查人员对试验表示理解和支持,并认为对侦查活动没有负面影响,反而有积极意义。试验还表明,建立讯问犯罪嫌疑人律师在场制度,并不需要“一刀切”,且我国目前及今后相当长一段时期也难以做到“一刀切”,因此,需要探索、建立替代性制度,如讯问时录音、录像制度。     

该当与危险:新型刑罚目的对量刑的影响

立基于再犯危险性预测的剥夺犯罪能力是由犯罪学派首先提出的刑罚理论,并广泛应用于保安处分之中,但是新近作为刑罚目的在量刑中的适用却引起了极大的争论。无论是类型化剥夺犯罪能力还是选择性剥夺犯罪能力,在一种有序列的、并合主义的量刑理论中,都可以找到立足之地,并发挥更加重要的作用,将有限的司法资源集中到最需要控制的危险犯罪类型和犯罪人之上,不但为"宽严相济的刑事政策"填补具体内容提供路径与方法,同时能够最大限度地为刑法赢得道德信誉。     

THE TRANSFORMATION OF TROUBLE: Police Certification and State Compensation of Sexual Assault Claims

This article is concerned with the transformation of private troubles into social and legal problems. It is argued that this transformation process involves a micro-and macro-politics of claims-making. Data are presented on police certification and state compensation of sexual assault claims in a mid western state. The largest urban area in this state is distinguished by the collective claims-making of antirape activists, and by the resulting presence of a sexual assault treatment center, which we expected would reduce the influence of racial characteristics on police certifications of innocence, while correspondingly increasing the influence of police certifications on the success of compensation claims. Our results confirm the above expectations. An implication of our findings is that black victims of intraracial sexual assaults are more likely to see their compensation claims succeed, and to see their troubles recognized as social and legal problems in those settings where macro-level antirape efforts have been institutionalized in treatment and/or advocacy centers. More generally, our findings suggest that the transformation of private troubles into social and legal problems can be contingent on collective claims-making in the context considered.     

Punishment and Permissibility in the Criminal Law

The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly insisted that what distinguishes a criminal punishment from a civil penalty is the presence of a punitive legislative intent. Legislative intent has this role, in part, because court and commentators alike conceive of the criminal law as the body of law that administers punishment; and punishment, in turn, is conceived of in intention-sensitive terms. I argue that this understanding of the distinction between civil penalties and criminal punishments depends on a highly controversial proposition in moral theory – namely, that an agent’s intentions bear directly on what it is permissible for that agent to do, a view most closely associated with the doctrine of double effect. Therefore, legal theorists who are skeptical of granting intention this kind of significance owe us an alternative account of the distinctiveness of the criminal law. I sketch the broad outlines of just such an alternative account – one that focuses on the objective impact of legislation on a class of protected interests, regardless of the state’s motivations in enacting the legislation. In other words, even if the concept of punishment is unavoidably intention-sensitive, it does not follow that the boundaries of the criminal law are likewise intention-sensitive, because the boundaries of the criminal law may be drawn without reference to the concept of punishment. I conclude by illustrating the application of this view to a pair of well-known cases, and noting some of its ramifications.     

非监禁刑:文明社会的刑罚选择——以欧洲为视角的思考

刑罚作为社会文化的一部分,其发展与人类文明同步,文明程度越高,刑罚方法就越合乎人性。在人道的前提下,矫正罪犯是刑罚选择的目标之一。非监禁刑能够在欧洲普遍使用,就因为它既是一种比较人道的刑罚方法,又在矫正罪犯方面具有其独特的优势。我国在建立自己的非监禁刑体系时,既要借鉴欧洲非监禁刑的立法及司法实践的经验,又要从本国实情出发。在人道主义与矫正效果的前提下,对非监禁刑体系的设计不仅要体现时代性,还要注重实用性。