Public perceptions of white-collar crime and punishment

Although financial losses from white-collar crime continue to exceed those of street crime, the criminal justice system has traditionally focused on the latter. Past research suggested that citizens are more likely to support punitive sanctions for street offenders than white-collar offenders. Recent corporate scandals have increased public awareness of white-collar crime, but whether public attitudes have been altered remains to be determined. Using a 2005 national sample of 402 telephone survey participants, the current study examined citizen perceptions of white-collar and street crime, as well as attitudes regarding apprehension and punishment. This research extended prior studies by also considering the influence of sociodemographic characteristics as well as perceptions of white-collar crime and punishment on the public's support for increasing resource allocation. Implications for future research and development of more effective white-collar crime control policy are discussed.     

Female drug abusers, narcotics offenders, and legal punishment in China

Drug abuse and narcotics offenses have been surging since the economic reforms in China. Accompanied is the dramatic increase of female involvement in the use of drugs and narcotics offenses. As a response, laws and governmental decrees have been promulgated and modified to curb these emerging and changing crimes and social problems. Courts at all levels in China also devoted more resources in handling and processing these particular criminals and crimes. Whether and how these legal initiatives have been translated into punishment that treats male and female offenders equally who committed similar offenses remains questionable. Citing published criminal court judgment documents, this study addressed this issue empirically and offered some plausible theoretical explanations for the treatment of female drug users and narcotics offenders by criminal courts in China.     

Citizen perceptions of the legitimacy of traffic stops

Lundman and Kaufman (2003) reported that Black drivers were less likely than others to report that police made legitimate stops or that officers acted properly during traffic stops. The present work explored whether these results held when other variables were included in the model. Utilizing data drawn from a convenience sample, results show that being Black is not determinant in an expanded model aiming to better understand citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy of traffic stops. Rather, size of place, time of day, and the race of the officer appeared to mediate the effect of “driving while Black”. Still, Black drivers had lower odds of reporting police acted properly during the traffic stop in either our basic or expanded model.     

罪刑法定与刑法解释的冲突

公正是刑法精神的核心.作为一种观念,罪刑法定在价值选择上偏向于刑法的安全性,重视形式公正;作为一种司法实践活动,刑法解释的最高价值目标是如何冲破罪刑法定的束缚以实现实体公正.罪刑法定与刑法解释于是出现了两种冲突:在现实中,刑法的稳定性与社会无穷发展的矛盾,使刑法解释在某些方面不可避免地要背离罪刑法定;但依法治原则,如何以牺牲最小的实体公正来换取形式公正应成为法治国家刑事司法的最高理念.     

临床法学教育与新世纪法学人才的培养--平等式对话教学方式的魅力

高等法律教育是我国教育事业的一个重要组成部分,担负着为市场经济建设与民主法制建设培养高层次专业人才的重要任务.在更新教育观念,转变培养模式,强化能力培养的教育改革的形势下,作为大学法学院应该教给学生什么?我们不可能在有限的四年时间内教给学生今后一辈子所需的各种法律知识.况且法律变化频繁,知识更新快捷.学校教师传授知识固然重要,但更重要的是教给学生分析、辨别、创造知识的能力.     

Examining legal authoritarianism in the impact of punishment severity on juror decisions

Recent Supreme Court decisions point to an increased reliance on juries to determine a defendant's sentence. Evidence is mixed on whether jurors are more likely to convict when the potential punishment is mild. The current study examined this issue, as well as the impact of legal authoritarianism (LA) (Kravitz, D. A., Cutler, B. L., & Brock, P. 1993. Reliability and validity of the original and revised legal attitudes questionnaire. Law and Human Behavior, 17, 661–677. doi: 10.1007/BF01044688), on jurors’ decisions. An ethnically diverse sample of participants completed the individual difference measure prior to viewing a videotaped, reenacted criminal trial. We manipulated the severity of the punishment the defendant would receive if convicted. Results indicated LA moderated the effect of punishment severity on verdict. Specifically, at higher levels of punishment severity, civil libertarians convicted less, while legal authoritarians convicted more. That is, the severity-leniency effect held for civil libertarians, but not for legal authoritarians. As juries become more responsible for determining a defendant's sentence, attorneys should be aware of the defendant's potential sentence and use voir dire to identify jurors who are higher on LA.     

Public sentencing rallies in China: The symbolizing of punishment and justice in a socialist state

This article explores the functions and format of the public sentencing rallyin China. The public sentencing rally is a judicial event in which the verdictand sentence of a criminal case already decided in court is announced publicly,in a venue such as a stadium or auditorium. Sentencing rallies provide an important organizational and operational avenue through which communicativeactions of blaming and shaming are constituted and relayed to their socialaudience. They can be convened for one individual or for a group of convictedcriminals, usually those convicted of serious crimes, crimes that attract somepublic attention or crimes that are targeted during anti-crime campaigns. Theirfunction is to educate and deter through a process of ritual and representation.They are a format in which the emotive representations of public shaming and gestures of moral indignation can be acted out. Rallies also represent to theirsocial audience, a conceptual framework through which to interpret thecharacteristics of judicial authority in post-1978 China. This aspect ofrepresentation involves two types of authority, the moral authority of thecourt to mete out popular justice and the institutional authority of the courtrepresented in the aspirational claims of institutional reform – proceduralpropriety, professionalism and the strict adherence to the law.     

Ethics and legal education

ABSTRACT

This article explores how theatre, particularly forum theatre, may be used as a means of testing new legislation. This article documents a workshop involving a theatricalised bilingual Tribunal and uses this as a case study of how theatre may be used to explore the implications of new legislation in order to gain an understanding of its potential problems and weaknesses. The article concludes by exploring other ways in which theatre may be used to explore new legislation.     

Do perceptions of punishment vary between white-collar and street crimes?

Much has been learned about the relationship between sanction threat perceptions and criminal activity, yet little remains known about the factors that are associated with sanction threat perceptions. Moreover, because most researchers had studied deterrence within the context of street crime, even less is known about the factors that relate to sanction threat perceptions for white-collar crime. This study used data from a national probability sample to examine whether the determinants of perceived sanction certainty and severity for street crime were different from white-collar crime. Using robbery and fraud as two exemplars, the findings indicated that while public perceptions of sanction certainty and severity suggested that street criminals were more likely to be caught and be sentenced to more severe sanctions than white-collar criminals, respondent's perceptions of which type of crime should be more severely punished indicated that both robbery and fraud were equally likely to be perceived ‘on par.’ Additional results indicated that the correlates of certainty and severity were more similar than different, but that the results differed according to whether respondents were asked about the punishment that white-collar offenders were likely to receive as opposed to what they should receive.     

指使肇事者逃逸行为的刑法学浅析

《关于审理交通肇事刑事案件具体应用法律若干问题的解释》中,对指使肇事者逃逸行为所做的司法解释,学者们从不同角度出发,对指使交通肇事者逃逸行为的法律定性提出了各自的见解。笔者认为,根据肇事者和指使者主观心态的不同组合,可对指使交通肇事者逃逸的行为作出不同的认定,但指使者和肇事者其可能成为故意杀人罪或遗弃罪的共犯,而不可能成为交通肇事罪的共犯,在指使者符合窝藏罪的构成要件时,应依照该罪处理。     

Human-centered legal tech: integrating design in legal education

As the legal profession begins in earnest to deploy digital technology in service and information delivery, greater numbers of law schools are including technology instruction in their curricula. The prospect of more lawyers with digital expertise, while a welcome development, amplifies a parallel imperative that new technology tools be designed to be responsive to evolving human needs. This paper argues that coupling technology instruction with training in human-centered design approaches offers legal educators a means of preparing lawyers not only able to generate novel technology solutions, but able to fundamentally improve legal institutions and programs through those results. The use of design pedagogies within legal education also provides educators and students with the opportunity to reimagine the law as a creative pursuit by exploring structured methods like empathy via observation, prototyping, and the embrace of failure, with learning outcomes that hold the potential to transform how lawyers approach their role. This paper concludes by detailing the insights the NuLawLab has gained in the application of design methodologies in the creation of digital legal resources, and the modifications we are adopting to the approach to produce better results for the legal sector.