Before the Law: Criminalization,Accusation and Justice

This review essay critically engages three socio-legal books directed to the changing bases of criminalization; namely, Lacey (In search of criminal responsibility: ideas, interests, and institutions, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017); Farmer (Making the modern criminal law: criminalization and civil order, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016); and Norrie, Justice and the slaughter bench: essays on law’s broken dialectic, Routledge, New York, 2016). The texts explore how modern (largely English) institutions of criminal law proscribe, assign responsibility and appear through contradictory socio-political ‘constellations’. They variously reference criminal law’s expanding punitiveness as it: embraces revived character-based ways of attributing responsibility via ideas of risk; drifts away from a social function of creating civil order; and, works through a ‘broken dialectic’ that fails to recognize its ethico-political auspices. The ensuing ‘overcriminalization’ is referenced variously, but this review questions a tendency to work off legal lexicons, with consequent limitations placed on the scope of social analysis. Referring to Roman and Cape colonial forms of criminalization, this review highlights processes of accusation that call subjects to account as criminals, thereby signalling an initiating socio-political layer upon which unequal forms of overcriminalization rest.     

Rethinking the Interface between Mental Illness,Criminal Justice and Academia

Punishment and treatment don’t occur within a vacuum. Responses in the justice system affect the mental health system, hospitals, clinics, and the welfare system. These systems are inextricably bound to each other. This paper, drawn from the 2009 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) Presidential Address, discusses issues regarding the criminalization of mental illness, fiscal crises, and three deinstitutionalization movements. Particular attention is given to the role of academia in reshaping the criminal justice system during the current fiscal crisis.     

Green and Grey: Water Justice,Criminalization, and Resistance

Since its initial proposal in the 1990s, ‘green criminology’ has focused on environmental crimes and harms affecting non-human and human life, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole. Describing global trends toward privatization of water supply systems and the criminalization of several water conservation activities and tactics, this paper employs theoretical perspectives offered by green, cultural, and critical criminologies, focusing on overt resistance to water privatization and oppressive regulations governing rainwater storage and residential water recycling. Taking a critical theoretical perspective, this paper examines water access and autonomy, individuals and groups openly resisting the criminalization of household water reuse and storage, and the cultural significance of water. This paper concludes with an exploration of the potential benefits of a green cultural criminology.     

制度危机与刑事司法系统的应对

随着制度主义在20世纪80年代的复兴,制度作为人类社会生活中一种内生变量所起的重要作用,重新得到了人们的重视。针对制度引发的社会危机,考察了社会危机对刑事司法系统带来的冲击,对刑事司法系统功能失效之原因进行了解析,从刑事司法系统的功能、内在属性等方面入手,探讨了制度引发的社会危机期间刑事司法系统的重新定位和改革措施。     

The Influence of New Mental Health Legislation on the Criminal Justice System

The current trend towards the deinstitutionalization of mental patients has led some to predict a movement into the criminal justice system. This paper describes an attempt to examine this hypothesis by comparing commitment and arrest rates in Philadelphia before and after the enabling legislation.

The hypothesis of movement into the criminal justice system was not supported by the comparison of rates, nor by an examination of the careers of ninety-four selected ex-patients.

The implications of the findings are discussed, with reference to similar studies in different states; and the conclusion is reached that the results must be interpreted in the light of the changing role of the criminal justice system as well as that of the mental hospital.     

The Courts,Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Illness: The Case of Dwight Lamon Jones

Through the lens of the high-profile spree killing perpetrated by Dwight Lamon Jones in 2018 in Phoenix, Arizona, this article examines the way the criminal and civil courts grappled with assessing the significance, extent, and outcome of the IPV and abuse directed at Dr. Connie Jones, Dwight Jones’s former wife. The case is unusual, not least because Dr. Jones had an upper middle-class income and numerous resources IPV victims do not normally enjoy. Nevertheless, she felt the courts let her family down. Journalists, victim advocates, and others also criticized the Arizona courts. The article outlines the spree killing and the criticisms of the courts, narrates Jones over a period of nine years including the IPV and mental illness, and, through the work of the Study Committee convened by Arizona Chief Justice Bales, explores the potential use of IPV risk assessments in the courts, particularly the family court, and related matters. It concludes with recommendations regarding possible preventive interventions in IPV cases, including those addressing mental illness.     

预防性犯罪化立法:路径、功能、弊端与完善

预防性犯罪化立法作为我国近年来刑法立法的重要实践,在预防犯罪方面发挥了极其重要的作用。我国预防性犯罪化立法主要有预备行为犯罪化、持有行为犯罪化、煽动行为犯罪化、抽象危险犯这四种实践方式,具有抵御日益积聚的刑事风险、实现刑罚双面预防目的、贯彻宽严相济刑事政策的重要刑法功能。然而,预防性犯罪化立法又存在着引发刑法工具主义滥觞、冲击谦抑主义刑法精神的弊端。随着风险社会的到来,预防性犯罪化立法还将呈现扩张趋势,探索预防性犯罪化立法的科学有效路径势在必行。就未来的预防性犯罪化立法而言,必须以宪法为引领,以刑法的基本原则为遵循,并采取多轨制的刑法立法模式。