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.     

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.     

The Long Reach of the Carceral State: The Politics of Crime, Mass Imprisonment, and Penal Reform in the United States and Abroad

This essay reviews five books as they relate to the causes and political consequences of mass imprisonment in the United States and the comparative politics of penal policy: Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007); Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen's Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (2006); Jonathan Simon's Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (2007); Michael Tonry, ed. , Crime, Punishment, and Politics in a Comparative Perspective (2007); and Bruce Western's Punishment and Inequality in America (2006).
The essay first examines the enormous and growing political repercussions of having a vast penal system embedded in a democratic polity, including the political and electoral consequences of felon disenfranchisement; increasing political, social, and economic inequality for people marked by the penal system; and the phenomenon of "governing through crime." It also analyzes emerging strategies of resistance to US penal policies and mass incarceration, why some countries are more vulnerable to hard-line penal policies than others, and what it will take to reverse the US prison boom.     

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.     

Interrogating absence: the lawyer in science fiction

This article argues that whilst concepts of law and justice can be seen as prominent in much science fiction, the role of lawyer is mostly absent. This article interrogates these absences and asks whether they can be traced back to contemporary concerns around professional ethics. Three potential absences are noted; firstly, justice is considered as immanent. In these fictional futures lawyers have become unnecessary due to the immediacy of the legal system. The second conceptualisation portrays lawyers as intertwined with corporate interests. In these speculative moments lawyers have become culturally indistinguishable from other types of corporate entities. The final science fictive texts highlight a desire for the lawyer-hero. In these texts justice is overwhelmingly absent and shows a continuing need for legal professionals. Each of these cultural moments presents important questions for current understandings of professional ethics and the regulatory systems in which they are based. A removal of lawyers from our shared understandings of the future is indicative of potential problems with perceptions of professional ethics in the present.     

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。     

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.     

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.     

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。     

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.     

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。     

Punishment in Indian Country: Ironies of Federal Punishment of Native Americans

Native Americans are US citizens, but they are also tribal nationals subject to complex and unique criminal jurisdiction arrangements over Indian lands. Tribal nations typically have tribal court jurisdiction over less serious crimes, but for serious crimes the federal justice system often supersedes tribal authority, exposing Native Americans to more severe punishments. In addition, recent federal programs have attempted to foster greater tribal/federal criminal justice coupling. Yet, examinations of criminal punishment of Native Americans are few, and most are outdated and/or of very limited generalizability. We examine the punishment of Native American defendants in federal court, focusing on 28 federal districts with substantial Indian presence. Using recent US Sentencing Commission data, as well as contextual data from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal courts, we focus on differences in the federal sentencing of Native American defendants, and how these differences are conditioned by indicators of tribal-federal criminal justice coupling.     

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 Proportionality: Part 2

This article is a companion to an article by the same author in issue 33.3 of Criminal Justice Ethics on the question of the standard by which the severity of punishment is determined to be proportional to the seriousness of the crime for which it is inflicted. Its chief argument is that basing the determination on what the offender deserves to suffer is morally problematic because it conflicts with principles of humanity that call for our taking the good of human beings as our end. By contrast, it is also argued, basing the determination on promoting public safety or preserving civil order is not similarly problematic because punishment inflicted to serve either of these ends is compatible with principles of humanity. The article concludes with a comment on how the harsh sentencing laws enacted in the United States in the past 40 years should be seen as a product of the former mode of determining punishment and not the latter.