In search of criminological tradition: the development of criminology in Taiwan

There has been a growing interest in the historical development of criminology(ies) throughout the world. This paper examines the development of criminology in Taiwan (Republic of China) using both questionnaire and interview data. Textbooks, institutional development, and research activity are taken as proxy measures of a criminological tradition. Beginning with criminology in Republican China (1929–1949), the article explores the key features of change in criminology against the background of Taiwan's own particular adoption of social, political and economic ‘modernisation’. Foreign influence and the contemporary meaning of ‘indigenous’ are considered. The article ends with a research agenda for a grounded historical sociology of criminology on Taiwan; key identified research questions relate to sponsorship, research priorities and the production of criminological knowledge; the reception of research by policy communities and practitioners; the relationship between criminological knowledge and politics; and the processes of selective appropriation.     

South Africa's PNR regime: Privacy and data protection

There has been an increase in the collection and use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data for security purposes globally. Though academic analysis of this trend has remained focused largely on the North American and European context, the Government of South Africa has been using PNRs since 2014 for security purposes. South Africa was the first country on the African continent to implement such a regime and is one of only thirteen states internationally to link its Advanced Passenger Information (API) and PNR systems. While there has been little attention on South Africa's use of PNRs, an inquiry into the country's PNR practices reveals striking privacy concerns, including the potential permanent retention of PNR data and a failure of the state to fully disclose if, and under what conditions, PNR data can be shared with other states. While South Africa has implemented a PNR regime that is comparable to the highest international standards, the data protection requirements appear to be far less developed. In fact, South Africa's PNR regime remains enigmatic as all indications and mention of PNR are elusive and scattered across government publications. As such, this paper aims to provide an introduction into the elements of South African PNR use, including the implications as they relate to law, data protection, and privacy.     

South Africa's Implementation of the ICC Statute: An African Example

In this article, the author analyses the most important provisionsof South Africa's Implementation of the Rome Statute of theInternational Criminal Court Act, 2002. In particular, attentionis given to the complex complementary scheme that is establishedunder the Act, including the jurisdictional bases under theAct for South African prosecution of war crimes, crimes againsthumanity and genocide; the substantive law that applies to anyprosecution of an ICC crime undertaken on South African soilpursuant to the Act; and the procedure to be followed in respectof such a prosecution. Other topics examined include the problemof immunities and amnesties in the South African context, andthe mechanisms devised by the Act to ensure South Africa's cooperationwith the ICC in respect of any investigation or prosecutionundertaken by the Court. The author concludes that the implementationAct is likely to serve as a meaningful example for other AfricanStates Parties in their efforts to domestically give effectto their obligations under the Rome Statute.     

Critical criminology,social justice,and an alternative view of incarceration

Despite its lack of general popularity, critical criminology continues to offer compelling criticism of the dominant paradigm of criminal justice. In this essay, critical criminology is presented along with its principal assertions, theoretical assumptions, and implications for social reform and criminal justice. The author argues that critical criminology provides a valuable theoretical backdrop for the analysis of incarceration, particularly its emergence as a form of local industry. Other developments pertinent to the political economy are also discussed, especially as they pertain to the shaping of patterns of unemployment and imprisonment.     

Rebuilding Utopia? Critical criminology and the difficult road of reconstruction in Latin America

This contribution assesses the developmentof criminology, during the last few decades, and contemplates the future course of critical criminology in view of developments in current capitalism, and their impact on ``Third World' societies (Latin America in particular).     

Imperialism, crime and criminology: Towards the decolonisation of criminology

Cohen (1988) once concluded that it is ironic that critics in the West are identifying forms of social control that are more traditional in the Third World as better alternatives to the neo–classical and positivistic repressive traditions in the West while some suggest that what they found malignant in the West should be exported to the Third World as benign. In this paper, I am going beyond Western crime control models to examine the character of criminology itself as an imperialist science for the control of others.     

台湾犯罪学理论观点比较

台湾地区犯罪学研究十分繁荣,专家众多、学派林立,为了加强对台湾地区犯罪学发展情况的了解,有必要对岛内几个具有代表性的犯罪学理论观点进行梳理、比较。     

In search of reasonable doubt

A number of different approaches have been used to quantify jurors' use of the decision criterion known as reasonable doubt. The purpose of the present study was to determine which of a select group of these approaches could be utilized to match the actual decisions of individuals role-playing jurors for an assault trial. Simon's (1970) rank-order approach, a self-report approach, an approach derived from Statistical Decision Theory (Fried, Kaplan, & Klein, 1975), and one derived from Justice White's explanation of theJohnson v. Louisiana (1972) decision were each used to estimate values for reasonable doubt. The estimates were then used to recreate the individual decisions, and the recreated decisions were then compared to the actual decisions. The results indicated that every approach accurately matched the actual decisions at a better-than-chance rate, although the rank-order and decision theory approaches were most accurate. The reasonable doubt estimates obtained from each of the approaches were also used to examine the basic assumption underlying the Thomas and Hogue (1976) juror decision model. Only the estimates from the decision theory approach provided consistent support for the assumption. A variety of methods were suggested for more definite determinations of the accuracy of the approaches tested, and the relative merits of the approaches were discussed.     

The Sutherland tradition in criminology: a bibliometric story

In this article, we provide an overview of the body of knowledge associated with the Sutherland tradition in criminology. We track Sutherland’s impact through a bibliometric analysis of papers citing any of Sutherland’s works and by focusing on publications that are co-cited with Sutherland. This approach enables us to visualize Sutherland’s role in relation to the forerunners and founding fathers of criminology during his own active period, to his followers, and to contemporary scholars. The dataset consisted of 2596 genuine articles that cite at least one of Sutherland’s publications, in which he appears as first author in Web of Science ^TM published between 1955 and 2010. The results show a clear impact of the Sutherland tradition more or less throughout the twentieth century, peaking during the 1930s and 1940s and decreasing in the 1990s, when the Sutherland tradition was more powerfully challenged, primarily by the life-course tradition.     

Personality and crime: Knowledge destruction and construction in criminology

Antipersonality themes in mainstream criminology have been fueled for years by highly suspect moral, professional, and ideological concerns and by something less than a rational empirical approach. The research evidence regarding the importance of personality has been positive form the beginning but has been the focus of a highly rhetorical and pseudoscientific form of criticism. These efforts as knowledge destruction are reviewed and are found to be ideologically and professionally convenient but weakly grounded logically and empirically. The papaer concludes that a social theory of criminal conduct need not resist recognition of the importance of human diversity.     

The analysis of case-control studies in criminology

Case-control designs, in which subjects are selected conditionally on the value of a dependent variable, are well suited for research in criminology. For many research issues, case-control studies should be preferred over cohort studies because they can provide estimates of the same parameters, with equal standard errors, for less cost. This paper describes the case-control design and some of the problems that arise in interpreting them. An approach to analysis and interpretation that has developed in epidemiology is presented.