Justice for All: Putting Victims at the Heart of Criminal Justice?

This article considers the claim in the government's White Paper, Justice for All , to put victims and witnesses at the heart of the criminal justice system and argues that there is an unresolved tension within the paper between instrumentalist crime control concerns and intrinsic concerns for the rights of victims and witnesses. It is argued that many of the proposals now contained in the latest Criminal Justice Bill are so preoccupied with rebalancing the system away from offenders that they risk doing injustice to defendants with little tangible benefit to victims and witnesses in terms of rights and remedies.     

Toxicological analysis of a fatal baclofen (Lioresal) ingestion

A fatality following ingestion of the drug baclofen (Lioresal) is described. Baclofen was identified in urine by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. After derivatization with trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid, baclofen was quantitated in serum and urine by high-performance liquid chromatography. The concentration of baclofen was 17 mg/L in serum and 760 mg/L in urine collected approximately 12 h after the overdose. To our knowledge, this is only the second reported fatality involving a baclofen overdose. The previous case did not include quantitation of baclofen in any biological fluid.     

R before D: the case of post conflict reintegration in Tajikistan1

Reintegration was prioritised over demobilisation and disarmament in Tajikistan's peace process. Inadequate disarmament rates were disregarded, but integration of opposition fighters into military and law enforcement units was relatively swift. This created high levels of trust among the former fighters and commanders. The quick provision of incentives, such as comprehensive amnesties and the offer of government positions and economic assets created stakes in the peace process for a number of actors. Transitional justice was largely overlooked. In this way, the case of Tajikistan runs counter to key elements of what has been termed the ‘post-conflict reconstruction orthodoxy’. At the same time, Tajikistan is a rare example of the emergence of post-war stability. This article provides a detailed account of the DDR process and outlines the incentives that it created for the warring parties. It also assesses the emergence of spoilers and the government's counter strategies. The article concludes by highlighting the consolidation of President Rakhmonov's power since 2001, but also raises some questions regarding the viability of Tajikistan's long-term political and economic development.     

"We Live in a Country of UNHCR"—Refugee Protests and Global Political Society

Between September and December 2005 over 3,000 Sudanese refugees held a sit-in demonstration at the Mustapha Mahmoud Square in Cairo, Egypt, which is located directly across from the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We analyze the events of the refugee sit-in as an act of global political society, one that saw people outside the realm of the political making demands for recognition and a say in the solutions being developed to relieve their plight. We argue that the sit-in at Cairo was fundamentally a disagreement between the refugees and the UNHCR over the politics of protection, care, and mobility. The article analyzes the strategies through which the refugees named their "population of care" in ways that countered the UNHCR's governmental strategies to classify the Sudanese refugee population in Cairo. We propose the concept of "global political society" as a way of thinking about global political life from the perspective of those who are usually denied the status of political beings. Global political society is a highly ambiguous site where power relations are enacted, taken and retaken by various actors, but in ways that do not foreclose opportunities for refugees to actively reformulate the governmentalities of care and protection.     

What Do Prosecutors Maximize? Evidence from the Careers of U.S. Attorneys

This study examines the performance of chief federal prosecutors(U.S. attorneys) and their subsequent careers. In a sample of570 attorneys in office from 1969 to 2000, the length of prisonsentences is positively related to subsequent favorable careeroutcomes for U.S. attorneys. In contrast, conviction rates donot appear to affect the careers of U.S. attorneys. These resultsare consistent with longer total prison sentences’ beingpersonally beneficial to prosecutors, and prosecutors’maximizing the length of prison sentences. Overall, the resultssuggest that sentence length, as opposed to convictions rates,is the relevant performance metric.