Foreign,criminal: a doubly damned modern British folk-devil

An association of strangers with danger and criminality is one of the most enduring social myths. However, in the UK, it was only after a media outcry 10 years ago over the release of foreign nationals from British prisons, that the ‘Foreign Criminal’ exploded into political and popular consciousness. Despite the small numbers of people involved, the location of this folk devil at the intersection of legal and moral assessments of ‘wickedness’ and alterity imbues it with considerable potency and has ensured that its reverberations are still felt strongly a decade later. Drawing on qualitative research with immigration detainees, deportees and irregular migrants, the article considers some of the many faces of the Foreign Criminal and illuminates their racialised, classed and gendered natures. It argues that a twin set of developments – coalescing around Operation Nexus and curtailed Article 8 right protections – work together to taint a growing number of non-citizens with criminality, whilst simultaneously undermining their claim to belong. Case studies are presented to demonstrate the fault lines of this malleable and expanding category, and to argue that the Foreign Criminal is paradigmatic of both social disorder and national boundaries, and is fundamentally shifting the lines of citizenship and belonging.     

Biopolitics,borders, and refugee camps: exercising sovereign power over nonmembers of the state†

This article addresses the relationship between the concepts of national identity and biopolitics by examining a border-transit camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers in Germany. Current studies of detention spaces for migrants have drawn heavily on Agamben’s reflection on the “camp” and “homo sacer,” where the camp is analyzed as a space in a permanent state of exception, in which the government exercises sovereign power over the refugee as the ultimate biopolitical subject. But what groups of people can end up at a camp, and does the government treat all groups in the same way? This article examines the German camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers as a space where the state’s borders are demarcated and controlled through practices of bureaucratic and narrative differentiation among various groups of people. The author uses the concept of detention space to draw a theoretical link between national identity and biopolitics, and demonstrates how the sovereign’s practices of control and differentiation at the camp construct German national identity through defining “nonmembers” of the state. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the Friedland border transit camp and on a discourse analysis of texts produced at the camp or for the camp.     

公安刑事拘留专项检察监督调研分析

目前我国公安刑事拘留实践中存在拘留对象扩大化、任意延长拘留期限、被拘留人员权利保障不足等诸多问题,其中一个重要原因在于检察机关不能对公安刑事拘留实施有效的法律监督,因此,必须完善相关立法,建立刑事拘留检察监督的长效工作机制。     

谈检察机关的拘留权问题

在我国1979年刑事诉讼法的规定中,公安机关是唯一有权决定并执行拘留的机关,检察院与拘留权无缘。在1996年修正后的刑事诉讼法中,虽然赋予了检察机关以拘留的决定权,但并未赋予拘留的执行权。而在实践中的情形,使得刑事诉讼法这一规定,处于一种尴尬的境地。     

谈看守所在押人员动态控制与事故的预防

监管安全是看守所的第一需要,也是做好其他工作的前提和基础。丧失了安全保障,侦查、起诉、审判和执行工作也就无从谈起。控制在押人员动态,预防各类事故的发生,发挥看守所监管安全长效机制,是看守所羁押管理工作的关键所在。     

联合国刑事司法准则与我国审前羁押

相比较联合国刑事司法准则关于人身自由权的规定,我国审前羁押的现状存在诸多问题,被羁押人的各项权利保护不足。应结合联合国刑事司法准则及我国国情,完善我国的审前羁押制度。     

Deportation, Detention & Torture by Proxy: Foreign National Terror Suspects in the UK

In many ways his article confronts the Sociologist C. Wright Mills’s famous injunction on turning private troubles into public issues. However, this is a trickier process than usual as the victims at the centre of these private troubles are not children, women, lesbian, gays, the elderly, or the disabled. The victims here are what Stan Cohen has described as ‘impure victims’, in that they are individuals who are suspected of being ‘involved’ in ‘terrorist’ activities. The private troubles these impure victims are experiencing are the loss of many of the rights most of us enjoy (for example, the right to liberty and the right to a fair trial). The public issue that will be examined here is what étienne Balibar refers to as the reality of the extreme violence of the State in contemporary societies against ‘radically excluded’ individuals. This chapter is an examination of the long and winding road to the Government achieving its over-riding ambition in the war on terror in the UK: the deportation of terror suspects to regimes where (despite diplomatic assurances) torture is inevitable.

从立法上完善我国的未决羁押制度

我国的未决羁押制度存在着羁押适用率高、超期羁押现象普遍、逮捕未与羁押实行分离、看守所未能充分保障被羁押人合法权利等诸多问题。究其原因,主要是我国现行刑事诉讼法对该制度的规定欠缺科学性与合理性。因此,立法机关有必要采取有效措施,严格未决羁押期限,实行捕押分离制度,进行看守所体制改革,使未决羁押制度既能保障司法办案,又能保障被羁押人的权益。     

论我国法律援助辩护之完善

在“推进以审判为中心的诉讼制度改革”背景下,我国法律援助辩护制度范围进一步扩大,法律援助辩护服务也呈标准化趋势,但仍不能满足司法实践需要,且同国际通行的法律援助辩护制度存在一定距离。对此,应将法律援助辩护的范围扩大至可能判处3年有期徒刑以上刑罚的案件,并适用于审前侦查、审查起诉两阶段。对于可能被判处3年有期徒刑以下刑罚的案件,为保障被告人在被拘禁期间最低限度的合法权利,至少由值班律师为其提供法律援助。鉴于死刑的严厉性与不可弥补性,死刑复核程序必须有律师辩护。为提高法律援助辩护率与质量,应考虑设立公设辩护人制度,健全法律援助辩护质量监督体系,并落实对法律援助事业的资金保障。     

对人民警察留置盘问权的法律思考

留置盘问权是《人民警察法》赋予人民警察当场强制扣押违法犯罪嫌疑人 ,对其进行讯问查证的重要权力。留置盘问是一种限制公民人身自由的强制措施 ,兼具行政性和司法性双重性质 ,其具有当场性、临时性、嫌疑性的特征。为在实践中正确适用留置措施 ,避免适用不当给公安机关带来负面影响 ,有必要对留置这一强制措施的性质、适用范围、适用程序等问题 ,在相关程序法中予以进一步规定。