Social Justice Advocacy by and for Tibetan Immigrants

Abstract

Advocacy for immigrants empowers them to fight for social justice. For Tibetan immigrants this struggle for justice inside their home country has been part of their U.S. immigration experience. They have also been part of New York City immigrant coalitions that are advocating for basic services lost during the 1996 Welfare Reform. The need for more equable access to education is also addressed. Finally, the harshness of expedited removal of asylum seekers needs to be supplanted by procedures that safeguard human rights.     

儒、道传统文化对生态正义的推助

中国儒、道传统文化中的朴素自然观照应了现代生态正义的应有之义,也就是现代社会所倡导的生态文明观的基本意旨。只有在优秀的生态文化背景之下,中国才能够找到反思生态问题的契机,并在实践中提出加强生态文明建设的倡导。中国儒、道传统文化中的生态思想潜移默化,预示着当代社会文明的新的正义归属。在生态危机与现代文明的冲突中,中国传统文化在孕育着解决这一矛盾冲突的文化力量之时,仍然扮演着作为思想自觉、精神教化的重要角色。     

Rethinking the restorative–retributive dichotomy: is reconciliation possible?

While the use of restorative justice within Western criminal justice systems continues to grow, its philosophical foundations remain uncertain. This inconclusiveness impacts directly upon the theoretical discussion of restorative justice and its relationship with existing paradigms of punishment, precipitating debate regarding its ability to integrate within justice systems governed by retributive paradigms. Specifically, this ambiguity of definition renders debate regarding the extent to which restorative justice philosophy exists as an alternative punishment or an alternative to punishment, and its existence as complementary or axiomatic to retributive justice unresolved. The philosophy of restorative justice, identifying its central features and addressing those previous attempts of contrasting restorative justice with the prevailing paradigm of retribution is explored here. However, it is suggested that aspirations of reconciling restorative justice philosophy with the retributive paradigm will be ultimately unsuccessful, due to the persistent latent ambiguity regarding the central foundation upon which restorative justice philosophy is built. Such concerns are also present when seeking to affirm the continued opposition of retributive and restorative justice.     

Teaching to shift people’s thinking toward peace: the relevance of Colman McCarthy’s work for peacemaking criminology

Peacemaking criminology is often conceived as a theoretical perspective built upon linkages between religious, feminist, and critical traditions. Equally important in peacemaking criminology is its teaching tradition, which promotes educating people about the values of peace, integration, cooperation, and caring over the values of control, repression, power, and domination. Teaching from a peacemaking perspective has generally involved efforts to design crime‐related courses that feature core concepts, readings, and policies within peacemaking criminology writings. However, such peacemaking teaching and writings have not commonly provided a central focus upon what needs to be taught to shift people’s thinking. This article thereby illustrates the work of peace educator Colman McCarthy, whose teaching experiences in high schools and universities are predicated upon influencing teenagers and young adults to embrace the idea that nothing can matter more than the struggle for and embracing of peace. This article also explores the ways in which Colman McCarthy’s books, I’d Rather Teach Peace and All of One Peace: Essays on Nonviolence, offer a foundation to help people shift their thinking toward a culture of nonviolence and peace.     

Effect of time and relationships on victim–offender dialogue completion in felony cases

Victim–offender dialogues (VODs) often take place in organizational contexts, the stakeholders of which may very well be interested in measures of program effectiveness such as completion rates. When reported, completion rates typically ranged from 40 to 60%. At the time of this study, Ohio’s VOD program was completing just 25% of initiated cases and program stakeholders were unsure as to the cause(s). An archived data analysis was performed on a sample (n?=?212) of the Office of Victim Services (OVS) completed and will-not-proceed files. One hypothesis and two research questions make use of archived data to explore this felony VOD context. The amount of time between the date the crime occurred and the date on which the dialogue file was initiated was not a significant predictor of dialogue completion. However, both victim-offender’s pre-crime relationship and dialogue file initiator were found to significantly impact dialogue completion rates. These results are considered in light of social exchange and uncertainty reduction theories.     

Frenemies: restorative justice and customary mechanisms of justice

More often than not, restorative justice is said to take roots in Indigenous practices. In fact, Indigenous and other traditional mechanisms of justice are often described as examples of restorative justice practices. In New Zealand, the government equates the Mãori approach to doing justice with family group conferences (FGC); a restorative justice mechanism which it claims embodies Mãori values and preferences. This article contends, however, that the type of ‘justice’ embodied in customary mechanisms, has often been taken out of context, and rendered universal and ahistorical through its representation as restorative justice mechanisms. Using fieldwork evidence, an analytical comparison between principles of restorative practices, New Zealand’s FGCs and the Mãori approach to justice was conducted. It concludes that this tendency to equate restorative justice with Indigenous approaches to law and justice is harmful and dangerous for it risks rendering the scholarship homogenizing and universalizing restorative justice, to the detriment of local preferences and practices.     

Restorative justice: the indigenous justice system

Dramatically different beliefs about justice will produce dramatically different methods for achieving justice. The beliefs underlying the traditional Indigenous restorative justice systems, systems that dramatically differ from the European-based system practiced in the USA are presented. The discussion highlights the legacy of colonialism for tribal communities and the resilience and creative resistance that have continued to characterize the spirit and ingenuity of Indigenous peoples.     

Meeting the enemy: American exceptionalism and international law

Howard Zinn has been classified in a number of ways for his many social contributions. However, despite the breadth of his work, he has never been considered a criminologist. It is likely that this is the result of the inaccurate perceptions many Americans have about crime being a predominantly street‐level social problem. Zinn maintains that the social harms caused by those in positions of political and economic power are in fact crimes against humanity that are far more destructive and violent than the actions our legal system has historically deemed criminal. He also points to the ways our criminal justice system is unjust and ineffective, and has demonstrated how social inequality ensures that the disadvantaged will be further subordinated by the criminal justice system. Zinn’s critical contributions about the most significant sources of social harm, the unjust nature of the American justice system, and the influence of social inequality offer an unorthodox criminological perspective that deserves special consideration. His unconventional criminology calls for increasing social justice by means of political dissent, social resistance, and civil disobedience.     

The death penalty loses its mind: an interview with Professor James Acker

In April 2009 the American Law Institute (ALI) made the decision to withdraw its support for the a section of the Model Penal Code that had been instrumental in shaping contemporary death penalty legislation. The Institute had created the modern legal and criminal justice administration framework for capital punishment as part of its Model Penal Code in 1962. Professor James Acker, one of the leading scholars on the death penalty in the United States, speaks to the import of this decision while providing some historical context for ALI’s involvement in the matter initially.     

The effect of transfer mechanism from juvenile court on conviction on a target offense in criminal court

The question of whether juvenile offenders should be handled in criminal court has been addressed by a number of studies. However, few have examined the effectiveness of the type of transfer mechanism and how it relates to protecting the public. Whether the mechanism used to transfer juvenile offenders to criminal court has any effect on the likelihood of being convicted of a target offense criminal court is examined here. It was found that the juveniles sampled in this study had a greater chance of being convicted on their target offense in criminal court if they were sent there via judicial waiver than if they were excluded from juvenile court jurisdiction by statute.