Narrative accounts from the citizens,victims, and offenders restoring justice program

This paper describes the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice (CVORJ) program, a prison-based program conducted as a pilot study at the Washington State Reformatory. The program brings together offenders and victims - though not involved in the same crime - in the company of interested community members to discuss restorative justice principles. The program focuses on the sharing of personal narratives of crime to explore how the harms resulting from crime can best be addressed and justice achieved. Of interest was how a restorative justice model that highlighted community participation could be incorporated into a correctional setting and whether healing could result from the use of surrogate offenders, victims, and community members. The restorative nature of the program, its method of operation, results from the qualitative evaluation, and key implementation challenges are presented.     

Prison Recruitment as a Policy Tool of Local Economic Development: A Critical Evaluation

Like the sports franchises and foreign auto plants that preceded them, state and local governments are touting prisons as the latest means of economic miracle‐making, often for small towns and communities that are economically depressed. The building of prisons is supposedly tied to the development of a just, fair, and rational criminal justice policy in a civil democratic society. Prison building has positive and negative social and political consequences for these communities. This critical essay explores some of these consequences in light of the literature on prison siting, the experiences of communities and prisoners, and relevant statistical data in the public domain. It also offers an alternative framework for evaluating prison recruitment as a strategy for local economic development.     

Gang activity in English prisons: The prisoners’ perspective

Abstract

Gang activity in American prisons has resulted in serious problems for prisoners and staff. This study assessed prisoners’ perceptions of gang-event frequency in the UK. Interviews with 360 prisoners from nine prisons in England and Wales indicated gang-related events were perceived as more frequent in all male categories of prison than they were in female institutions. Prisoners reported drug possession and prisoner groups being formed along regional origins as the most frequent gang-related activities. Recidivists perceived higher levels of gang-related activity than did first-time prisoners. Gang-related variables also predicted prisoners’ perceptions that groups of prisoners have more control over events in the prison than do staff and that order in the prison may not be maintained. The merits of interviewing prisoners and the implications of the results for maintaining order in prison are discussed.     

When Law and Order Returned to Denmark

The international trend toward increased use of punishment has been visible in Denmark since the early 1990s and has accelerated in the first years of the new millennium. As in other countries the trend cannot be explained by changes in crime or a political turn to the right. The increased use of punishment in (post) modern societies undoubtedly has a very complex background. The primary explanation put forth in this article is that it is based on a radical change in the human conditions and in the way people relate to their world. It is an existential revolution and, as such, it has emerged ‘from the bottom’ of society. This suggestion is not offered as an alternative to existing explanations that have been mainly dealing with factors and matters ‘from the top’ of society, such as changes in and of the political system (e.g. populism), the mass media (e.g. alarmism), the social organization of society (e.g. bureaucratization and/or industrialization), and globalization (e.g. imitation and/or internationalization of penal law). Rather, the hypothesis should be viewed as an important supplement to these existing theories and explanations.     

The Fall of the Finnish Prison Population

At the beginning of the 1950s, the prisoner rate in Finland was four times higher than in the other Nordic countries and among the highest in Europe. However, the steady decrease that started soon after the Second World War has continued, and in the beginning of the 1990s Finland reached the Nordic level. The paper discusses some backgound factors behind this ''success story''. In addition, the paper examines the relation of prisoner rates and recorded crime. A comparison between the Nordic countries reveals that the major crime trends have been practically similar despite striking differpractices ences in the use of imprisonment. As concluded in the paper, the decrease in the prison population is one of the major victories of Finnish crime policy.     

试论我国非营利组织在应对突发事件中的优势与作用

目前我国正处于突发事件的高发期,而处于社会转型和尚不完善的市场体制下的政府,缺乏足够的资源和能力来独立地应对各种突发的公共事件。非营利组织在应对突发事件中具有超强的资源动员优势、效率优势、专业性优势、维护社会公平的优势。我国的非营利组织在突发事件应对中发挥着开展防灾教育、接受社会捐赠、动员志愿人员、参与现场救援和灾后重建活动的作用。因此,应将非营利组织纳入我国的突发事件应对体系中。     

儿童心理表征的功能及其教育对策

心理表征是问题解决的关键,成为了近些年来心理研究领域的焦点之一。本文介绍了心理表征的基本概念,描述了心理表征的在知识理解、筛选信息、选择策略和影响认知结果方面的重要功能,并从知识经验、元认知和概念性理解等方面探讨了心理表征的培养和训练方法。     

试论宪法权利的刑法保障——原理、功能和经验

我国对宪法权利的保障主要采用了间接保障的模式。在这一以民事法、刑事法和行政法三大部门法为主要构架的模式中,刑法作为法律保障的最后一道屏障,无疑具有举足轻重的作用。然而,当今学界对这一问题的关注却极为有限。事实上,可以从原理、功能和经验三个方面着手,对宪法权利的刑法保障问题进行全面并深刻的理论剖析,进而与客观实践相互为用,促成我国宪法权利的间接保障模式(尤其是宪法权利的刑法保障)的进一步发展和完善。     

论刑事程序中“诉”的功能

在我国的刑事程序中,"诉"的功能发生了异化,它不是将法院作为第三方引入到纠纷的解决机制中,从而促成控辩平等对抗、法官居中裁判的诉讼构造,而是将法院串联到了国家一方的权力行使链条上,进而促成了公、检、法三机关合力追究、惩罚犯罪的线形构造。如果在"国家本位主义"观念的影响下,认为刑事诉讼在本质上只是国家刑罚权的实现方式,那么在刑事诉讼中,自然只存在国家刑罚权的享有者和国家刑罚权所针对的对象这样的两方组合。因此,要在刑事程序中恢复"诉"的应有功能,必须要摆脱"国家本位主义"的影响。     

我国行政诉讼功能之实证分析

我国行政诉讼法实施以来取得了显著的成就,但通过对<中国法律年鉴>1989年至2004年行政审判相关数据的统计分析发现,我国行政诉讼在一定程度上发挥了维护行政与救济权利的功能,在相当程度上发挥了监督行政的功能.行政诉讼的实有功能、设计功能与应有功能出现偏差.修改我国行政诉讼法应正确认识行政诉讼的功能,合理定位立法目的,选择与行政诉讼性质和立法目的相匹配的制度,使行政诉讼发挥立法者所预设的功能.