Criminal Justice Reform and the System’s Efficiency

This article discusses key issues that affect the efficiency and credibility of criminal justice systems. It discusses the consequences of an ineffective criminal justice system, which include unnecessary delays within the court process, ‘cracked’ or ‘collapsed’ trials, and lack of public confidence. It notes that a successful system must contain strategic, integrated, and sustainable mechanisms that enhance the entire criminal justice process. The article examines a number of initiatives taken by various countries, noting the measurable and sustainable results, while also suggesting ways that these programs could be improved. Finally, the author notes the importance of measuring the outcomes and impact of the suggested initiatives in an effort to promote transparency and accountability, as well as effectively record successful strategies.     

Child Witnesses and the International Criminal Justice System: Does the International Criminal Court Protect the Most Vulnerable?

While warfare has always caused human suffering, modern armedconflicts have been synonymous for the deliberate and systematicattacks on non-combatants, many of whom are children. As theyoften possess the best and sometimes only evidence of a particularcrime, it is likely that children will be asked to testify beforethe International Criminal Court. Given that they are the mostvulnerable of all witnesses, the Rome Statute contains variousprovisions designed to protect the interests of children. Whilethe Court's witness protection regime will help reduce the stressand trauma associated with giving evidence, various improvementscould be made to ensure that children are provided with thenecessary protection that their susceptible status requires.     

Does the Criminal Justice System Treat Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Offenders Leniently?

We examine whether men who physically assault their female partners or who commit sexual assault receive more lenient treatment than offenders who commit other types of assaults. Analyses of the National Violence Against Women Survey do not support these hypotheses. Rather, they suggest that women who assault their male partners are particularly likely to avoid arrest. In addition, both men and women who assault partners are more likely to avoid conviction than other offenders. Evidence suggests that there has been an increase over time in rates of arrest and conviction for partner violence.     

Criminal Justice “Hollywood Style”: How Women in Criminal Justice Professions Are Depicted in Prime-Time Crime Dramas

With the abundance of prime-time crime dramas on television, it is imperative that researchers examine how female criminal justice professionals are depicted in the world of fiction versus in reality. In this study, a content analysis of 10 prime-time television crime dramas was conducted. Of the 69 characters observed, female criminal justice professionals were portrayed as young, White, and single. Female characters were more provocatively dressed, and they also were more likely to be victims of crime. Unlike previous studies that showed that female characters were underrepresented on prime-time television, here women were overrepresented as crime scene investigators, detectives, and special agents. Stereotypical images of women as subordinate, nurturing, affectionate, and sexually attractive still prevail. However, compared to their male counterparts, female characters were equally assertive, self-confident, and competitive.     

Expanding the Boundaries of Criminal Justice: Emphasizing the “S” in the Criminal Justice Sciences through Interdisciplinary Efforts

At its very core, the phrase “criminal justice sciences” points to the interdisciplinary nature of our field. However, efforts to promote and support interdisciplinary teaching and research face significant barriers. In this paper, I address how interdisciplinarity is conceptualized, the history of criminal justice as an interdisciplinary field, why we should promote interdisicplinarity, barriers we confront in interdisciplinary efforts, the degree to which ACJS members engage in interdisciplinary practices, factors related to interdisciplinarity, and opportunities for increased interdisciplinary research in criminal justice. To grow as an academic field, I conclude that we must look to other disciplines such as biology, computer science, policy, and women’s studies as we expand our disciplinary boundaries.     

The Pinochet Case: International Criminal Justice in the Gothic Style?

Book reviewed in this article:
Woodhouse, Diana (ed), The Pinochet Case: A Legal and Constitutional Analysis     

Low Self‐Control and Contact with the Criminal Justice System in a Nationally Representative Sample of Males

Prior research on law enforcement and court system actions suggests that offender demeanor influences practitioner decision making. However, few studies have examined a key implication of this body of work—namely, criminogenic factors associated not only with offending but also with demeanor may result in a greater likelihood of contact with and formal processing by law enforcement and the courts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we test the hypothesis that low self‐control, which is associated with a range of characteristics that might influence practitioner perceptions of individual offenders’ demeanors, will predict greater contact and formal processing. Briefly, we found that low self‐control was consistently related to criminal justice system involvement as measured by police contacts, arrests, age at first police contact, and arrest onset. The implications of the findings for theory and research are discussed.     

Morbidity and Mortality Risk Among the “Forgotten Few”: Why Are Girls in the Justice System in Such Poor Health?

The present study assessed the physical health of a population of girls sentenced to custody in a large US State via medical examinations and clinical assessments in adolescence and young adulthood. Findings indicated that injuries, obesity, and sexually transmitted diseases were the norm, with over 50% of the population meeting criteria for each of these health problems. A dose–response relationship was documented between childhood victimization and injuries and injury risk in adolescence and self-harm, HIV risk, physical health symptoms, and hospitalizations in young adulthood. The relationship between childhood victimization and poor adult physical health was fully mediated by health-risk behaviors in adolescence. Clinical and policy implications of the high mortality and morbidity risk among female juvenile offenders are discussed.     

Reluctant Participants in Restorative Justice? Youthful Offenders and Their Parents

This paper examines offender and parental involvement in the Vermont Juvenile Restorative Panels Program. In this program, juvenile offenders on probation appear before citizen‐run boards to negotiate the terms of their probation, which may include apologies, community service, restitution, and competency development tasks. Victims and parents of the offender also participate. This study reports findings from a qualitative analysis of 22 cases, including observations of panel meetings and interviews with program coordinators, offenders, parents, and victims. We find that offenders vary in level of participation as well as in their willingness to take responsibility. Parents do not understand the program well, worry about their child’s likelihood of compliance, but generally support the goals of the program. The implications of these findings for restorative practices with juveniles are explored in the concluding section.     

Achieving and Managing Equality in the Criminal Justice Process: Do the New Equality Measures Go Far Enough?

Abstract: This article will explore some of the legal and organisational challenges facing the various agencies involved in the delivery of criminal justice, in the UK, in adhering to the Equality Act 2006, Equality Duties and the forthcoming Single Equality Act (which, proposes a Single Equality Duty). We will consider the impact of these changes with reference to European legislation. Of particular interest will be the themes of effective implementation of the current Duties, equality of access and equality of outcome for both victims and offenders to appropriate services to tackle offending behaviour and the prevention of crime. This article will highlight issues surrounding impact assessment and the role of agency discretion and regulation. We offer some comments on future directions and the role of the regulatory bodies including the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).     

Seen but Not Heard? Parallels and Dissonances in the Treatment of Rape Narratives across the Asylum and Criminal Justice Contexts

A significant proportion of women seeking refugee status in the United Kingdom will claim to have been raped in their country of origin. Even where this is not the sole basis of an asylum claim, it may be relevant to its determination. While criminal justice responses to rape have been the subject of extensive academic criticism and legislative reform, the processes of disclosure and credibility assessment in the asylum context have received little attention. This article explores possible parallels and dissonances in the treatment of rape across the asylum and criminal justice contexts, drawing in particular on the findings of a 2007 pilot study. It considers how problems such as the underreporting of rape, the inability of the victim to 'tell the story' in her own words, a hostile adjudicative environment, and the tendency to regard factors such as late disclosure, narrative inconsistency, and calm demeanour with suspicion – may be replicated and compounded in asylum cases. It also acknowledges the complex intersection of race, gender, culture, and nationality in this context.     

Where Do They Belong? Giving Victims a Place in the Criminal Justice Process

Historically, victims once had an active participatory role in the criminal justice process and were responsible for not only initiating but also for prosecuting offenders. In common law countries, victims were gradually sidelined and by the 20th century, their role was reduced to that of a witness to a crime against the state. The exclusion of victims from the criminal justice process is a major source of dissatisfaction for victims as many of them want to participate in the criminal justice process. This has fuelled initiatives with restorative justice that claim to more fully include victims than conventional criminal justice. This paper examines three different approaches found in the literature on how to let victims participate. One view is that victims should leave the criminal justice system and that criminal justice should be replaced by alternative, restorative justice schemes in which victims are granted full recognition and respect for their dignity. A second approach is to integrate restorative practices such as victim-offender mediation in the criminal justice process. The third approach is to integrate victim participation and respect (so-called restorative values) in the criminal justice system. These three approaches are discussed and compared with one another. The paper closes with recommendations for criminal law reform.     

Do We See Victims’ Agency? Criminal Justice and Gender Violence in Spain

The Spanish criminal justice system has a specific Law for Gender Violence (1/2004). This article addresses what happens when a law with a feminist perspective is implemented in a predominantly patriarchal institution. The main aim of this paper is to approach women’s experiences in the Spanish criminal justice system, analysed as a technology of power producing women’s subjectivities, and focusing on their agency. We used a qualitative methodology with participant observation (24 sessions) and in-depth interviews with professionals working with gender violence (17) and women who reported gender violence by their heterosexual partner (11 individual and 1 group). We analysed data with the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti. The results focus on subjective processes and agency among reporting violence, the expedited trial, protection and restraining orders, and probation.     

Whose Best Practices? The Significance of Context in and for Transnational Criminal Justice Indicators

To what extent is it possible to identify transnational good or best practice and what are the difficulties and challenges in doing so validly? The claim made in this article is that it may be helpful to examine the spread of global social indicators as a series of projects that themselves reproduce ideas of what counts as ‘good’ practice. This will help identify the ‘politics of comparison’ in each case. Taking as an example recent calls for criminologists to engage with the global targets for change set by the United Nations, the article discusses the aims of comparison, the uses of indicators, and the way that commensuration misrepresents contexts in the drive to evaluate local conditions in terms of overarching standards. It then revisits the debate concerning the so‐called knowledge and governance ‘effects’ of global social indicators.     

How Does the Criminal Justice System Operate from an Empirical Point of View? An Analysis of the Netherlands Case

This study analyzes how the Dutch criminal justice system works from an abstract and a practical perspective. Using data collected through quantitative (police and prosecution databases) and qualitative (interviewing of key participants familiar with the databases and observation of some ongoing trials) procedures, it identifies the main features of this system as well as the main problems that researchers might have when working with data recorded by the police and the prosecution service. This is a methodological paper that intends to contribute with the data analysis research in this field.     

A Criminal Injustice System? Sex Offender Suspects and Defendants

The purpose of this paper is to open up a discussion regarding the potential shift from the presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt regarding those suspected of or charged with sexual offending. It is acknowledged that further investigation is needed and it is hoped that this discussion is one of many. The crux of this paper therefore is that sex offender suspects and defendants potentially find themselves in a criminal injustice system. Whilst the focus is predominantly on ‘victims’ (usually female) and people suspected or charged with sexual offending (usually male) within the criminal justice system in England and Wales the concerns articulated here are not confined to this context. For example such concerns are echoed in relation to the potential injustices occurring on American campuses. This demonstrates that this is a domestic and international situation and a situation that extends beyond the criminal justice system. We argue that what is occurring at home and abroad has to be contextualised with regard to public, media and official attitudes and approaches to ‘victims’, suspects, defendants, sex, sexual consent, sexual offending and a subsequent shift from the presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt. It is argued that not only is the presumption of innocence undermined by the presumption of guilt regarding suspects and defendants in cases of sexual offending, it is also undermined in England and Wales by the victim personal statement (VPS). The VPS contains and promotes the idea that there is a ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ before this has been legally established in a court of law. These assumptions embodied within the VPS weaken the principle and practice of the presumption of innocence. The safeguard of the presumption of innocence is potentially under threat and the result is an even greater potential for miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions.     

New Paths in International Criminal Justice?: The Internal Rules of the Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers

The Internal Rules of the Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers adoptedin June 2007 provide some insight into how a non-adversarialsystem might work in the context of a hybrid tribunal with jurisdictionover both domestic and international crimes. This approach presentsvarious novelties, especially with respect to the pre-trialand trial stages of the proceedings, and provides an exampleof integration into a domestic non-adversarial system of principlesderived from international criminal procedure.