Retributivism is one of the most prevalent theories in contemporary penal theory. However, despite its popularity it is frequently argued that too little attention has been paid to the implications of retributivism for prison management and prison life, including prison visits and furlough. More so, it has been questioned both whether the various forms of retributivism found in the philosophical literature on criminal punishment have anything to say about what prison life ought to be like and whether they are (...) able to criticize deeply contested rules and practices, such as those that deny inmates contact with family-members for the sake of prison discipline. In this paper, we argue that prison visits and furlough have a crucial role in a prison system based on retributivist principles. In particular, we argue that the communicative theory of punishment has important theoretical resources for proving a strong and compelling rationale for both furlough and visitation on retributivist grounds. Besides exploring this rationale, we also discuss the practical implications of this view for the penal policy. (shrink)

Scholars depict punishment as a dialogue. However, in the context of a life sentence the question emerges whether a penal dialogue is feasible. This paper seeks to explore the responsive work of life-sentenced prisoners during their parole hearings. Drawing on qualitative analysis of sentencing remarks and parole board hearings in Israel, the paper theorizes how these life prisoners negotiate their strict, exclusionary and stigmatizing sentencing communication, on the one hand, and the possibility of re-integration and inclusion, on the (...) other. As the findings suggest, the applicants responsively negotiate their flawed character, stigma and citizenship. The analysis reveals the intricate mechanism of penal dialogue in a case of a life sentence and sheds light upon the possibilities and limitations of communicative theory when considering the full meaning of the penal experience. (shrink)

Companies that have joined the United Nations Global Compact are required to submit a Communication on Progress, which is an environmental, social, and governance report, to the UNGC every year. If they fail to do so, they are marked and listed as non-communicating on the UNGC website. Using the event study methodology, this study shows that a company that fails to report to the UNGC is penalized in the financial markets with an average cumulative abnormal return of −1.6% over (...) a period of 5 trading days around the event. Although a major critique against the UNGC is that the initiative’s voluntary nature and its lack of external monitoring and sanction mechanisms render it ineffective in terms of the business participants’ implementation of the UNGC principles into their operations, this result suggests that investors may be able to pressure UNGC business participants to increase their compliance with the UNGC requirements and to “walk the talk.”. (shrink)

In order to deal with high-dimensional distributed data, this article develops a novel and communication-efficient approach for sparse and high-dimensional data with the penalized quantile regression. In each round, the proposed method only requires the master machine to deal with a sparse penalized quantile regression which could be realized fastly by proximal alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm and the other worker machines to compute the subgradient on local data. The advantage of the proximal ADMM algorithm is that it (...) could make every parameter of iteration to have closed formula even in high-dimensional case, which greatly improves the speed of calculation. As for the communication efficiency, the proposed method does not sacrifice any statistical accuracy and provably improves the estimation error obtained by centralized method, provided the penalty levels are chosen properly. Moreover, the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimation and the convergence of the algorithm are convincible. Especially, it presents extensive experiments on both the numerical simulations and the HIV drug resistance data analysis, which all confirm the significant efficiency of our proposed method in quantile regression for distributed data by comparative and empirical analysis. (shrink)

The Black antislavery theorist Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (c.1757–c.1791) is increasingly recognized as a noteworthy figure in the history of philosophy. Born in present-day Ghana, Cugoano was enslaved at the age of 13 and shipped to Grenada, before being taken onwards to England, where the 1772 Somerset court ruling in effect freed him. His Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery [1787/1791] broke new ground by demanding the immediate end of the slave-trade and of slavery itself, without any compensation to (...) slaveholders. Notwithstanding this, Cugoano endorsed the legitimacy of penal enslavement on principled grounds – like many other abolitionists writing in late eighteenth-century Britain. “Every free community might keep slaves, or criminal prisoners in bondage” – and even sell them. Amidst the growing literature exploring Cugoano’s abolitionism, his paradoxical justification of penal slavery has bewildered commentators. Far from an offhand inconsistency, I argue that this justification is deeply embedded within his moral and legal philosophy; constraining his antislavery arguments while simultaneously serving retaliatory aims. His two-pronged principle of just punishment – the lex talionis (‘eye for an eye, bondage for bondage’) as tempered by mercy – sometimes demands penally enslaving colonial slaveholders and slave-traders in turn. Throughout, I compare Cugoano’s justification of penal enslavement with those of other early modern philosophers, especially Locke and Kant. This helps me position Cugoano within the history of philosophy, thus making his views more accessible to a wider philosophical audience. It also indicates just how deeply theories of punishment shaped philosophical thinking about penal bondage in the period. (shrink)

This article discusses the removal of voting rights from those convicted of crimes. I focus on two recent defences of penal disenfranchisement: firstly, I question one justification of the view that voting rights are conditional on the fulfilment of certain responsibilities that offenders fail to meet. Secondly, I criticise an expressivist justification of disenfranchisement based on the idea that it is uniquely suited to express dissociation from serious wrongdoing. While embracing the expressivist perspective of the latter line of argument, (...) I argue that disenfranchisement also expresses attitudes that are incompatible with the commitment to equality. Disenfranchisement conveys the judgment that offenders are not fit to participate in the democratic process. In doing so, it violates the duty of the state to treat all its citizens with equal respect and undermines offenders’ equal status. Moreover, this policy fosters objectionable inequalities of esteem: other members of the community are very likely to internalise the judgment that offenders are second‐class citizens and to regard them as inferior, which in turn undermines their status in society. (shrink)

The Oyapock River has been the border between France and Brazil since the Treaty of Bern came to resolve a centuries-old dispute between the two states. Only populated by indigenous communities and a few adventurers, the two banks of the river are untouched by any lasting colonial and national settlement before the second half of the 19th century. Penal colonization is the formula adopted by the two states to fill the "void" of a border to be formalized. The criminal (...) models circulate and are reinterpreted by participating with great intensity in the making of the territory. (shrink)

La crise sanitaire et sociale provoquée par la Covid-19 a été surmontée par des dispositions qui relèvent autant d’une logique de précaution que de prévention. En effet, la certitude liée à l’existence de ce virus n’a pas suffi à lever toutes les zones d’ombre sur son traitement. Au moins au début de la crise, c’est l’existence même d’un risque qui pouvait être discutée. En conséquence, les dispositions adoptées, sous la menace de sanctions pénales, relèvent en partie d’une logique de précaution (...) dont l’analyse appelle des commentaires mitigés. Il en va a fortiori de même pour l’usage des qualifications de droit commun qui s’avèrent inadaptées. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Community of the Future Page part 3 the right TO earn. 455 section 1 the development IN economic life and law Introduction 459 A. The development IN urban industries and the influence OF the law 463 Chapter 20. The dissolution of the old industrial organisations, the craft guilds 464 Unrestricted economic freedom of trade 464 I. England and North America 468 II. 496 Chapter 21. The Formations of the New Organisations of Industry and their Struggle for Legal (...) Recognition 504 1. England 509 II. The other [countries 515 Chapter 22. The Struggle for Power of the Organisations. The Period of Boycotting 517 I. Boycott-persecution 525 1. Penal Law 530 2. Civil Law 530 531 B. Other Countries II. The Trust Problem and the Law of the Great Industrial Countries 538 1. England 538 2. United States 540 3. France and: Germany 545 B. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The question "What can justify criminal punishment ?" becomes especially insistent at times, like our own, of penal crisis, when serious doubts are raised not only about the justice or efficacy of particular modes of punishment, but about the very legitimacy of the whole penal system. Recent theorizing about punishment offers a variety of answers to that question-answers that try to make plausible sense of the idea that punishment is justified as being deserved for past crimes; answers that (...) try to identify some beneficial consequences in terms of which punishment might be justified; as well as abolitionist answers telling us that we should seek to abolish, rather than to justify, criminal punishment. This book begins with a critical survey of recent trends in penal theory, but goes on to develop an original account (based on Duff's earlier Trials and Punishments) of criminal punishment as a mode of moral communication, aimed at inducing repentance, reform, and reconciliation through reparation-an account that undercuts the traditional controversies between consequentialist and retributivist penal theories, and that shows how abolitionist concerns can properly be met by a system of communicative punishments. In developing this account, Duff articulates the "liberal communitarian" conception of political society (and of the role of the criminal law) on which it depends; he discusses the meaning and role of different modes of punishment, showing how they can constitute appropriate modes of moral communication between political community and its citizens; and he identifies the essential preconditions for the justice of punishment as thus conceived-preconditions whose non-satisfaction makes our own system of criminal punishment morally problematic. Punishment, Communication, and Community offers no easy answers, but provides a rich and ambitious ideal of what criminal punishment could be-an ideal of what criminal punishment cold be-and ideal that challenges existing penal theories as well as our existing penal theories as well as our existing penal practices. (shrink)

Scholars depict punishment as a moral dialogue between the community and the offender, which addresses both the offender’s crime and character. However, how the penal message evolves vis a vis that crime and character as it passes through the different stages of the criminal process has remained under-theorized. This article, building on communicative theory, explores the interrelation between crime and character along the penal process, from sentencing, through prison, to parole release. We argue that in the penal (...) dialogue the relationship between crime and character evolves in a dynamic way through three phases: separateness (sentencing), fusion (prison), and re-distinction (parole) of crime and character. The proposed analysis develops the communicative meaning of the penal process, provides a normative account of the work of punishment administration authorities, and explores applications of our proposed normative analysis for the administration of the punishment. (shrink)

Part of the Studies in Crime and Public Policy series, this book, written by one of the top philosophers of punishment, examines the main trends in penal theorizing over the past three decades. Duff asks what can justify criminal punishment, and then explores the legitimacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them. Duff argues that a "communicative conception of punishment," which he presents as a third way between consequentialist and retributive theories, offers the (...) most fruitful way of understanding punishment's meaning and justification. Duff addresses such questions as how much sentences should be constrained by proportionality requirements; what modalities of punishment best communicate their intended meaning; and what decisionmaking procedures he envisions. This book will appeal to criminologists, philosophers, and others interested in theories of punishment. (shrink)

We encounter offense through various media: an intended facetious remark, a protester’s photographic image of an aborted fetus, an epithet, a stereotypical joke of a minority racial group. People say things that cause offense all of the time. And causing offense can have serious consequences, both personal and professional; the offending party is subject to termination, suspension, or social isolation and public opprobrium. Since the stakes are so high we should have a better understanding of the mechanisms of offense involved (...) in these media and how they work. In this dissertation I focus on two mechanisms for communicating offense—i.e. racial and ethnic slurs and racial humor. First, I lay out a few distinctions concerning the particular kind of offense being targeted, objective versus subjective offense, and when state involvement might be appropriate for penalizing offensive behavior. Next, I discuss racial slurs and the conditions of their offensiveness. I offer a non-content based view of slurs’ offense, which contradicts the consensus view held by most philosophers of language and linguists working on this issue. Also, I look more closely at a purportedly non-offensive use of slurring language, so-called linguistic appropriation, and determine that appropriated uses are permissible in certain settings only under certain conditions. And finally, I propose a tri-partite analysis of racial jokes that provides conditions for when they are merely racial, racially insensitive, or racist. (shrink)

In this paper I develop and defend a new theory of the Atonement - the Communal Substitution Theory. According to the Communal Substitution Theory, by dying on the cross Jesus either takes on the punishment for, or offers satisfaction for, the sins of the human community. Individual humans have sinned, but human communities have sinned as well. Jesus dies for the communal sins. As a result, human communities are forgiven and reconciled to God, and through the event of communal forgiveness, (...) individual human sins can be forgiven as well. Moving the focal point of atonement to communal sins has various advantages: well-known objections to satisfaction and penal theories are avoided, and many of the advantages of other theories of the atonement are organically integrated into the communal substitution theory. (shrink)

RESUMEN: La labor del Tribunal Penal Internacional para la Ex-Yugoslavia tuvo un momento importante en la compresión del principio de legalidad, como principio básico en la garantía de los derechos humanos, al enfrentar no sólo el derecho consuetudinario como fuente de derecho sino también diferentes modos o enfoques en la identificación de este derecho consuetudinario. Esta relación debe ser analizada a la luz de las limitaciones que tiene el derecho internacional y, sobre todo, de los procedimientos de creación de (...) normas. No resulta fácil exigir responsabilidad en el cumplimiento del derecho internacional humanitario y de los derechos humanos. La práctica de este Tribunal abre una vía para la reflexión con la finalidad de asegurar el respeto de los derechos humanos en cualquier circunstancia, incluso de aquellos que llevaron a cabo la comisión de graves crímenes contra la comunidad internacional.ABSTRACT: The work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was important for understanding the principle of legality as a key principle on the guarantee of Human Rights. The former was due to the Tribunal’s work on having faced the customary law as a source of law using different perspectives for its identification. The link between customary law, principle of legality and human rights has to be analyzed taking in account the limits of International law and the procedures for creating legal norms. It is not easy to invoke responsibility in the fulfillment of international humanitarian law and international law of human rights. The practice developed by this Tribunal provides an avenue for thinking about ensuring the respect of the human rights in any case including the commission of grave crimes against international community. PALABRAS CLAVE: derecho internacional de los derechos humanos, principio de legalidad, derecho internacional humanitario, costumbre internacionalKEYWORDS: international law of human rights, principle of legality, international humanitarian law, international custom. (shrink)

It is well documented that the effects of legal punishment tend to drift to the family members, friends, and larger communities of convicted offenders. Instead of conceiving of punishment drift as incidental to legal punishment, or as merely foreseen but not intended by state authorities and thus permissible, I argue that efforts ought to be undertaken to limit or ameliorate it. Failure to confine punishment drift comes perilously close to punishment of the innocent and is at odds with other legal (...) doctrines and broader penal practices that hold offenders, and offenders alone, responsible for their crimes. Numerous arguments urging tolerance of punishment drift, or more assertively defending it, are examined and found wanting. (shrink)

The institution of “probation,” a form of judicial probation aimed for adults, was rewied by the recent justice reform law (Cartabia Reform, Dec. 30, 2022), where, even in the rewied version, was confirmed its high civic and reeducational value. Through probation, offenders can realize the paths to change own critical reinterpretation of their behavior. This is an interpretation of punishment that preserves its retributive value, but the challenge that institutions and associations take as welcoming these people into the activities and (...) projects of a (re)educational nature, gives this particular penal measure a restorative purpose too. Probation concerns first and foremost the offender, it also verifies the skills, resilience, and responsibility of those it accommodates. With these premises, in 2023 a collaboration between some professors of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and the Piacenza Volunteer Service Center led to the realization a training course and later a Research involving the Associations that take in the people on probation. (shrink)

Le droit pénal est l’un des symboles les plus éclatants de la souve-raineté nationale. Domaine privilégié du relativisme, il serait le moins universalisable des systèmes de droit. Or le voici en première ligne de l’universalisme juridique avec la définition du crime « contre l’humanité » et la création d’une Cour pénale internationale permanente. De ce « paradoxe pénal » peut-on dégager des valeurs communes? Le risque, si le droit imposait ainsi sa vision de l’humanité, serait le glissement de l’interdit « (...) fonda-teur » à un « fondamentalisme » juridi-que. Pour éviter de faire du droit inter-national pénal un nouveau dogme, il faut ouvrir les voies d’un universel suffisam-ment pluraliste pour être à la fois effectif et légitime. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Según las normas de derecho internacional los Estados, frente a los crímenes mas graves, tienen una obligación ineludible, para con sus propios ciudadanos, pero también para con la comunidad internacional, de investigar, perseguir y castigar a los responsables. El desarrollo del derecho penal internacional y el carácter taxativo de las obligaciones de los Estados no ha evitado, sin embargo, que el procesamiento a los perpetradores de crímenes masivos sea considerado a menudo como una tarea imposible, irrealizable e incluso (...) no siempre deseable. En este artículo se analizan las críticas al instrumento jurídico-penal como el mecanismo adecuado para enfrentar la violencia colectiva en el ámbito de la justicia transicional.ABSTRACT: According to the rules of international law, States, in the face of the most serious crimes, have an inescapable obligation, to their own citizens, but also to the international community, to investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible. The development of international criminal law and the binding character of States' obligations have not, however, prevented the prosecution of perpetrators of mass crimes from being often considered an impossible, unrealizable and even not always desirable task. This article will focus on such criticism against criminal law as an appropriate tool in the field of transitional justice. (shrink)

This text examines the main trends in penal theorising over the past three decades. It asks what can justify criminal punishment and then explores the legitemacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them.

This paper considers current personalized recommendation approaches based on computational social systems and then discusses their advantages and application environments. The most widely used recommendation algorithm, personalized advice based on collaborative filtering, is selected as the primary research focus. Some improvements in its application performance are analyzed. First, for the calculation of user similarity, the introduction of computational social system attributes can help to determine users’ neighbors more accurately. Second, computational social system strategies can be adopted to penalize popular items. (...) Third, the network community, identity, and trust can be combined as there is a close relationship. Therefore, this paper proposes a new method that uses a computational social system, including a trust model based on community relationships, to improve the user similarity calculation accuracy to enhance personalized recommendation. Finally, the improved algorithm in this paper is tested on the online reading website dataset. The experimental results show that the enhanced collaborative filtering algorithm performs better than the traditional algorithm. (shrink)

According to some philosophers, a necessary condition of morally permissible punishment is that it communicates deserved censure for the offender’s wrongdoing. The author calls this the Communicative Condition of punishment. The chapter considers whether the use of mandatory crime-preventing neurointerventions is compatible with the Communicative Condition. The author argues that it is not. If we accept the Communicative Condition, it follows that it is impermissible to administer mandatory neurointerventions on offenders as punishment. The author then considers whether it is permissible (...) to offer an offender a neurointervention as a replacement for incarceration or in exchange for a shorter sentence. He notes that this could meet the Communicative Condition, although, somewhat oddly, only in cases where the neurointerventions have harmful effects. (shrink)

State agents’ misconduct (SAM), such as the violations carried out by the police or prosecution, may harm an offender’s rights during the criminal process in various ways. What, if anything, can retributivism, as an offense-focused theory that looks to the past, offer in response to SAM? The goal of this essay is to advance a retribution-based framework for responding to SAM within the criminal process. Two retribution-based arguments are provided. First, a retribution-based response to SAM aims to protect the legitimacy (...) of the criminal process. Such an argument is based on how the crime and punishment connect to the moral standing of the state and that connection’s meaning for the legitimacy of the trial (legitimacy-based argument). Second, a retribution-based response to SAM aims to consider the offender’s side of the penal dialogue and promote a more accurate calibration of the penal suffering (compensation-based argument). Based on these arguments, the essay theorizes the legal response for SAM in US and non-US traditions through the retributive lens. The essay concludes with a call for expanding the multiple roles for retributive logic to include the actions of law-enforcement actors and addresses what that expansion means for the justice of the criminal process. (shrink)

When Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the IMF, was arrested on charges of sexual assault arising from events that were alleged to have occurred during his stay in an up-market hotel in New York, a sizeable portion of French public opinion was outraged - not by the possibility that a well-connected and widely-admired politician had assaulted an immigrant hotel worker, but by the way in which the accused had been treated by the American authorities. I shall argue that in one (...) relatively minor respect, Strauss-Kahn’s defenders were correct. They were correct to argue that the parading of Strauss-Kahn before the press, in handcuffs - the so-called perp walk - constituted a form of punishment; and thus that it contravened the principle that criminal punishments should only be administered after a fair trial. So-called ‘expressive’ theorists of punishment hold that a form of harsh treatment can only constitute a form of punishment if it has an expressive role. Within the expressive family, we can distinguish between views on which the primary target of the communication to be the society of which either offender, or victim, or both are members—what I call ‘Denunciatory Views’, and views which take the principle target of penal communication to be the offender—such as Antony Duff’s Communicative View. I shall argue that on both a minimal account of punishment and on either kind of expressive view, ‘perp walks’ are a form of punishment. (shrink)

This essay uses Garland’s framework from The Culture of Control to suggest an agenda for critical penology. This includes, as well as the analysis of choices actually made and the cultural repertoire actually available, describing and advocating other possible choices, and analysing the conditions of possibility for the adoption of other (better) policies and practices; and examining the implications for the future of choices which are currently being made. Carlen’s Women and Punishment: The Struggle for Justice and Garland’s edited collection (...) Mass Imprisonment in the USA are examples of these penologies. Another way in which penologists, social theorists and philosophers can attempt to influence policy choices is to contribute to enlargement of the available cultural repertoire. The development and promotion of restorative justice is given as one example of this; another is work by philosophers such as Duff, Matravers and Norrie which addresses questions such as the source, nature and limits of penal communities; the basis of political obligation, and the relational nature of responsibility for crime. (shrink)

This paper questions the notion that states may be justified in denying certain prisoners the right to vote as a means of distancing themselves from particularly grave wrongs. Christopher Bennett has recently defended prisoner disenfranchisement as a fair and deserved retributive punishment for crimes, and Mary Sigler and Andrew Altman have argued in favor of prisoner disenfranchisement as a civil restriction. All three proponents agree that disenfranchisement should be reserved for those guilty of the most serious offenses. I assert that (...) it is inappropriate to treat citizens in this manner and will advocate for the right to vote, whether disenfranchisement is perceived as a form of punishment or as a civil measure. I will present two arguments against disenfranchisement as it impacts both citizens and political community at large. First, it excludes citizens from the democratic arena and restricts the opportunity to reintegrate offenders into the political community. While a criminal sentence is intended to be burdensome, the burden associated with disenfranchisement extends beyond the appropriate penal scope. (shrink)

Throughout the nineteenth century, significant transformations took place in the understanding of Western homosexuality, shifting from the domain of criminal law to that of medical science. This article explores the role of European legal thought in laying the groundwork for such changes, particularly starting from the mid-eighteenth century. Examining the contributions of the Roman jurist Filippo Maria Renazzi (1745–1808), this research emphasizes his role among the thinkers who lived through the transition from the European ius commune tradition to the era (...) of criminal codes. Renazzi, a conservative university professor in papal Rome, not unfamiliar with Enlightenment discussions, penned a successful criminal treatise in Latin between 1773 and 1786. His expertise was also in demand during the subsequent development of the criminal code for the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. By focusing on the figure of Renazzi, still not extensively studied, this article attempts to shed light on the transition towards the general decriminalization of non-reproductive carnal offenses, including sodomy. In the new penal code project, only acts committed against the will of others and public order remained generically condemned. This underscored the indifference of criminal law towards penalizing behavior that medicine would subsequently come to recognize as an inherent identity. (shrink)

Most punishment theories acknowledge neither the full extent of the harms which punishment risks, nor the caring practices which punishment entails. Consequently, I shall argue, punishment in most of its current conceptualizations is inconsistent with treating offenders as equals qua persons. The nature of criminal punishment, and of our interactions with offenders in punishment decision-making and delivery, risks causing harm to offenders. Harm is normalized when central to definitions of punishment, desensitizing us to unintended harms and obscuring caring practices. Offenders (...) may be partially silenced and excluded by mainstream criminal justice practices which limit interaction between offenders and practitioners. When we ignore significant harms, or silence and exclude, we treat others as passive non-subjects. This partially objectifies offenders, and is inconsistent with treatment as equals. Penal theories employing harm-centred and harm-normalizing definitions of punishment can provide few resources to help practitioners either avoid, or recognize and respond to, harms. Care ethics, by contrast, motivates the avoidance of harm, ongoing inclusive engagement, and respectful interaction with others. I argue that defining punishment without presupposing harm facilitates the identification of morally problematic harms, and recognition of caring practices. I offer a principled argument, and political and pragmatic supplementary arguments, for responding to offenders without intentional harm and with care. Principles drawn from care ethics can help to strengthen mainstream criminal practices by structuring decision-making and action. Bottom-up alternative criminal justice practices share some values with these proposed guiding principles, allowing a partial test of the principles. I consider examples of restorative justice practices, therapeutic jurisprudence, community justice and other problem-solving court practices, in addition to considering how well mainstream punishment practices measure up to these principles. My analysis illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the principles, and how they might contribute to securing treatment as equals for offenders in mainstream practices. (shrink)

§ 219a of the German Penal Code (StGB) – the so-called ban on advertising abortions – has been subject of an increasing legal-political controversy since 2017 and was dropped by legislation in July 2022. This paper examines and reconstructs the extent to which the aforementioned ‘ban on advertising’ was (in–)‌compatible with recognized standards of medical ethics. For this purpose, arguments put forward in public discourse on both sides of the conflict, insofar as they go beyond basic attitudes toward abortion, (...) will be subjected to a plausibility test from the perspective of medical ethics. This will show that (I.) according to the standard understanding of autonomy in medical ethics by Beauchamp and Childress, the provision of information about abortions is not an undue influence, but a necessary precondition for autonomous decisions by pregnant women; that (II.) the feared undesirable social developments after the abolition of § 219a StGB are empirically unfounded and largely implausible; but that on the other hand (iii) a multi-perspective communication landscape with accessible expert information promises to effectively counteract the self- and external stigmatization of unintentionally pregnant women. As a result, this analysis provides two things: a coherent medico-ethical justification for the annulment of § 219a StGB and an argumentative basis for the defense against future efforts to support biopolitical positions by censoring available information. (shrink)

Sometimes persons are legally responsible for reckless behavior that causes criminal harm. This is the case under the newly drafted provisions of the U.S. Model Penal Code (MPC), which holds persons responsible for “simple” rape (nonconsensual sex without proof of force or threats of force), where the offender recklessly disregards the risk that the victim does not consent. In this paper we offer an explanation and corrective critique of the handling of reckless rape cases, with a focus on the (...) U.S. criminal justice system, although our analysis is applicable more broadly. We argue that a wider group of reckless rapists are criminally responsible than is captured by the MPC and claim criminal punishment of reckless rapists must be justified by looking to both moral desert and instrumental aims achieved by criminal punishment. Part of the law’s job is to communicate and enforce society’s expectations regarding unacceptable behavior. In punishing reckless rape, we are not just giving people what they deserve, but also reinforcing and shaping norms regarding sexual behavior. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss the Chinese attitude towards caring for people within family first, using law only as a back-up. I demonstrate this both through negative/corrective applications of law, such as penal law, and positive/protective applications of law, such as those that protect human rights. I do not necessarily have a right to what is most beneficial to me, nor do I or the community necessarily benefit from the most fair punishment. In both cases, law protects fairness, while (...) a different kind of social care rooted in a smaller community enables a richer healing and nourishing of the person and community. With reference to Confucian philosophy and present scholarship, I address some differences between possessed rights and seeking a right way to care for people in situ, and between fairness and human potential. Instead of trying to show how the Chinese perspective has the seeds of a modern Western conception, I highlight a perpendicular value. (shrink)

In the course of the late Middle Ages, vagrant people (and in particular those who were poor and needy) increasingly came to be regarded as a burden by the resident communities of the area of modern Switzerland, a phenomenon with parallels elsewhere in Europe. This is especially apparent in the harsher penal actions applied to them; most cases for communal high justice concerned foreign delinquents. Alongside the gradual development of Switzerland from complex confederate network to structured state, the Tagsatzung, (...) the diet and therefore central institution of towns and cantons, played an important role in the development of defence mechanisms against the vagrant poor. Even though the Tagsatzung as an institution was relatively weak, it was the place where political decision makers met and exchanged ideas, not least about poverty and welfare. Joint federal decisions relating to the defence against the vagrant poor can be found from 1470 onwards. This is also where the principle of welfare according to place of provenience was first propagated. However, constant reissues of the defence mechanisms against the foreign poor suggest that the decisions of the diet were not very effective. (shrink)

On 24th March 2020, the first nationwide complete lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India for 21 days which was later extended to 31st May 2020. Consequently, thousands of migrant workers placed in big cities had no other option but to go back to their native villages. Their journeys back to villages- thousands of kilometres on bicycles or foot due to the non-availability of public transport amidst the travel ban- were driven by the compulsions of food and shelter. (...) In one of many heart-wrenching incidents, sixteen laborers were run over by a freight train while they were resting on the railway tracks. The images of the Roti on the railway track strewn across were beamed on the national news channels, as a telling commentary of the unimaginable hardships of these workers. Ironically, in the eyes of law, they were trespassers under the Indian Railways Act, 1989. The Indian Railway did not pay any compensation to the victims. Their act also violated the Indian Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Indian Penal Code, 1860- the law for the breach of lockdown guidelines and the law for disobedience of order by public servants respectively- for having decided to travel amidst a travel ban. The semiotics of law-making acts ‘criminal’ bereft of ‘moral culpability’ are seldom questioned on their supposed amoral foundations. Pandemic exhibited that social fissures not only condition the individual or community actions but also the actions of the State. Minorities especially Muslims were at the receiving end of State’s selective enforcement of lockdown laws in India. The various instances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic expose the hollow claims of equality before the law and the equal protection of laws as a constitutional promise to every citizen. This article aims to unravel the ostensible and the actual moral exhibition of such Indian laws through the lens of several incidents during the nationwide lockdown in India. This paper would argue that this constructed positivist amorality needs to be deconstructed to unearth the power imbalance that it seeks to hide. (shrink)

A number of articles and empirical studies over the past decade, most by Paul Robinson and co-authors, have suggested a relationship between the extent of the criminal law's reputation for being just in its distribution of criminal liability and punishment in the eyes of the community – its "moral credibility" – and its ability to gain that community's deference and compliance through a variety of mechanisms that enhance its crime-control effectiveness. This has led to proposals to have criminal liability and (...) punishment rules reflect lay intuitions of justice – "empirical desert" – as a means of enhancing the system's moral credibility. In a recent article, Christopher Slobogin and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein (SBR) report seven sets of studies that they argue undermine these claims of empirical desert and moral credibility and instead support SBR's proposed distributive principle of "individual prevention," a view that focuses on an offender's future dangerousness rather than on his perceived desert. -/- The idea that there is a relationship between the criminal law's reputation for justness and its crime-control effectiveness did not originate with Robinson and his co-authors. Rather, it has been a common theme among a wide range of punishment theory scholars for many decades. A particularly important conclusion of recent Robinson studies, however, is their confirmation that this relationship is a continuous one: even small nudges in moral credibility can produce corresponding changes in the community's deference to the criminal law. This is important because it shows that even piecemeal changes or changes at the margin – as in reforming even one unjust doctrine or procedure – can have real implications for crime-control. SBR's studies, rather than contradicting the crime-control power of empirical desert, in fact confirm it. Further, SBR's studies do not provide support for their proposed "individual prevention" distributive principle, contrary to what they claim. -/- While SBR try to associate their principle with the popular "limiting retributivism" adopted by the American Law Institute in its 2007 amendment of the Model Penal Code, in fact it is, in many respects, just the reverse of that principle. With limiting retributivism, the Model Code's new provision sets desert as dominant, never allowing punishment to conflict with it. SBR would have "punishment" essentially always set according to future dangerousness; it is to be constrained by desert only when the extent of the resulting injustices or failures of justice is so egregious as to significantly delegitimize the government and its law. This ignores the fact that even minor departures from justice may have an important cumulative effect on the system as a whole. What SBR propose – essentially substituting preventive detention for criminal justice – promotes the worst of the failed policies of the 1960s, where detention decisions were made at the back-end by "experts," and conflicts with the trend of the past several decades of encouraging more community involvement in criminal punishment, not less. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss ethical issues connected with neuroscientific research on prisoners, focusing specifically on whether participating in such research should always be disregarded when making decisions about early release from prison. It was once routine in some jurisdictions for a prisoner’s participation in medical research to count as “good behaviour”, which could be given weight in decisions about early release. However, medical ethicists now widely regard this practice as ethically problematic, because prisoners might feel pressurised to participate in medical (...) research programmes by the desire to escape a coercive and harsh prison environment, and thus their agreement to take part in the programme might not satisfy the freedom requirement for valid consent. Yet, there may be a tension between traditional medical ethics and theories of punishment (a tension which also arises in other contexts at the interface between medicine and punishment). From the perspective of retributive or communication/reform-based theories of punishment, it might seem unfair for parole boards to disregard willingness to participate in medical research, if the prisoner were motivated by altruistic considerations. This altruism might indicate that the prisoner “deserves” a shorter sentence or may be a sign that the prisoner has reformed. This chapter will consider whether/how this tension between traditional medical ethics and penal theories can be resolved. For example, if the medical research involves relatively safe interventions such as fish oil pills or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), then the above-mentioned worries about prisoners’ ability to provide free consent may be less pressing than if the risks of side-effects were greater. Furthermore, the validity of consent also seems to depend partly on whether the prison conditions are humane or excessively harsh. In addition, problems also arise in this context from within penal theories. Ironically, transparency about what factors will be taken into account in decisions about early release, which would presumably be encouraged by communication/reform theories, could raise the possibility that the prisoner was motivated to participate in the research programme by a desire for early release rather than altruism, thus making it harder to determine whether participation is a genuine sign of reform. (shrink)

Contesting Carceral Logic provides an innovative and cutting-edge analysis of how carceral logic is embedded within contemporary society, emphasizing international perspectives, the harms and critiques of using carceral logic to respond to human wrongdoing, and exploring penal abolition thought. With chapters from scholars across many disciplines, people in prison, as well as penal abolition activists, the book explores what a future without carceral logic would look like, as well as how such a future is to be developed. The (...) book is also an exploration of penal abolition thought as it is developing in the twenty-first century. Diverse geographical, cultural, identity and experiential frames inform the book's themes of analysing carceral logic as it harms disparate people in disparate places, creating anti-carceral knowledge, exploring case studies pointing to radical alternatives, and to contesting carceral logic from below. Ultimately, Contesting Carceral Logic provides the reader with an alternative and critical perspective from which to reflect on carceral logic, the punitive state and the criminalizing systems that almost exclusively dominate across the world. Finally, it raises the questions of how we are to build communities as well as transform our response to human wrongdoing in ways that are not defined by racism/ethnocentrism, class war and heteropatriarchy. Contesting Carceral Logic will be of great interest to not only scholars and activists, but also provides an introduction to key carceral issues and debates for students of penology, criminology, social policy, geography, politics, philosophy, social work and social history programmes in countries all around the world. (shrink)

Le présent article propose de faire le point sur la façon dont le législateur français appréhende le conflit d’intérêts dans le milieu sanitaire, partagé entre droit commun et déontologie, au moment même où des scandales médiatiques l’obligent à encadrer la profession médicale. Le problème du débat juridique français est de se concentrer sur la définition essentialiste du conflit d’intérêts, alors qu’une approche pragmatique semblerait plus appropriée pour le qualifier pénalement. L’expérience française que nous relatons ici est riche d’enseignement pour d’autres (...) États. Entre déontologie et droit normatif, ce débat montre les limites du langage juridique et nous éclaire sur la bonne méthode à appliquer pour traiter les conflits d’intérêts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 147 The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas. By ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Studies in historical theology. v. 6. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1990. Pp. xxiv + 214. $14.95 (paper). The Godly Image presents a retouched version of the author's dissertation, first published in 1982 as Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas: Towards a Personalist Understanding (Washington, DC: University Press of America). Seeking (...) a broader audience, the author has dropped the dissertation's numerous Latin footnotes, shortened and enlivened the chapter titles, and streamlined some of his arguments (e.g., pp. 9395 ). He has as well corrected (e.g., on Pannenberg, p. xxii; on Anselm, p. 157) or toned down (e.g., the description of monastic theology, p. 1) earlier statements. Reference to the possibility that Aquinas suffered a nervous breakdown disappears (p. 18). Still, the work remains substantially the same, reproducing even some typos (e.g., William of St. Armour [sic], p. 3) from the original. The new subtitle, Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas, is unfortunate. First, it leads one to expect a survey of the major soteriological positions articulated in the period between the two, hut such is not forthcoming. The work remains what the original title indicated, a study in the thought of Aquinas. Second, in that work Anselm plays hut a perfunctory role, serving as the foil from whose mercantile model (p. 73) or juridical mentality (p. 91) Thomas can advance to a more appropriately interpersonal grasp of the mode of our salvation. This reading of Anselm, however, leaves him in the hands of liberal Protestant historians of doctrine of the nineteenth century, and, as the bibliography indicates, it ignores more recent literature which rightly stresses the metaphysical and religious depth of Anselm's key concept of iustitia. For a precise rendering of the relation between Anselm and Aquinas, one may wish to place greater emphasis on ST III, q.14, a.I, ad 1. In that text Aquinas accomplishes two things. First, he integrates Anselm's concept of satis· faction with the traditional religious insight that, in some sense, Christ suffered what sinners deserve to suffer. At the same time he deepens the concept by rendering explicit the place of love and obedience as the formal element in satisfaction and thus rejoins Anselm in rejecting any strict notion of penal substitution. These reservations aside, the author's thorough, comprehensive, and competent investigation into Aquinas fills a lacuna in the history of soteriology, a lacuna, one regrets to say, still left open by the work of his immediate predecessor, B. Catao. At the same time the scope 148 BOOK REVIEWS of the author's work offers a further and important contribution. By researching Thomas's thought on satisfaction in the context of penance as well as soteriology, the author manages to suggest, and explicitly, that the generative matrix for Thomas's theoretic work in both areas lies in the cruciform dynamics of Christian conversion, the life of grace. With this insight he opens a door from historical theology to a contemporary systematics. Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. WILLIAM P. LOEWE Free Will and the Christian Faith. By W. S. ANGLIN. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Pp. vii + 218. $55.00 (cloth). W. S. Anglin, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Mathematics at McGill University, has produced a highly compact and compelling volume which attempts in just 218 pages to prove God's existence, to argue for personal immortality, to defend the coherence of theism against the problem of evil, to provide cogent analyses of both omnipotence and omniscience, and to examine criteria for distinguishing divine revelation from other forms of communication. The thread holding these rather motley swatches of cloth together is the author's concentration on libertarian freedom which weaves throughout the above issues in one way or another. It shows up in the expected places (e.g., in the so-called 'free will defense' of the problem of evil) but also in places hitherto unexpected (Anglin nicely argues that if humans are truly free in the libertarian sense, then it is appropriate and necessary that the Scriptures take the... (shrink)

ORCA.IT, a new online test of online research and comprehension was developed for the Italian population. A group of 183 students attending various types of upper secondary schools in Northern Italy were tested with the new tool and underwent further cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. The different school types involved in the study are representative of the school population in the Italian system, but can also be easily compared with the educational systems of other countries. The new test turned out to (...) have good psychometric properties after accurate item construction and final selection. In particular, Version 1 showed better characteristics than Version 2. Subsequently, comparison with one-way ANOVAs were performed to test whether differences exist between different school types, between groups with and without reading difficulties, and between males and females. Such differences are sometimes reported in the literature, but many remain controversial. Further, Pearson’s bivariate correlations were calculated to analyze associations between scores on the ORCA.IT and cognitive/neuropsychological variables. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis was performed on aggregated scores to identify the predictors of performance on each of the two versions, The test, especially in the most complete version (Version 1), appears to accurately and reliably capture students’ web searching abilities and online reading comprehension. The tool could highlight differences in online search and comprehension ability between students with and without reading difficulties, not penalizing overall performance but allowing very specific weaknesses to be pointed out. Further, it seems to be able to capture differences due to both educational pathways (different school types) and social attitudes (differences between males and females). Most interesting, it shows to be clearly resting on specific cognitive and neuropsychological abilities, including language, memory and attentional skills, which explain a large portion of the total variance. Offline text reading comprehension is a crucial predictor of online reading performance, while decoding ability is not. Prior knowledge also influences the results, as expected. The new tool turns out to be rather independent from previous internet experience and to measure more cognitively grounded processes related to information gathering, processing and communicating. (shrink)

This book explores the concept of punishment: its meaning and significance, not least to those subject to it; its social, political and emotional contexts; its role in the criminal justice system; and the difficulties of bringing punishment to an end. It explores how levels of criminal punishment could and should be reduced, without compromising moral standards, public safety or the rights of victims of crime. Core contents include: Why punishment matters, the salience of emotions in its various discourses and the (...) role of culture. The politicisation of punishment and legitimacy. The penal system, the prominence of the prison in research on punishment and the role of community sanctions. The aims of punishment, its limits and the role of power. The ethics of punishment and human rights. Punishment and social order. This book is essential reading for all criminologists, as well as students taking courses on punishment, penology, prisons and the criminal justice system. (shrink)

Nineteenth–century scholars assumed that the Athenians as a community punished citizens with death, exile,atimia, and fines and used imprisonment only to hold those awaiting trial, those awaiting execution, and those unable to pay fines.1As they saw it, brief imprisonment in the stocks occasionally supplemented these penalties, but always as additional penalty–never as a penalty on its own. Barkan saw in the use of imprisonment as an additional penalty the likelihood of general penal imprisonment and used evidence from the oratorical (...) corpus to make an argument therefore.2 His argument seems to have been largely ignored–the nineteenth–century interpretation continuing dominant; and the issue, largely unexplored but for a few glancing references in recent scholarship.3 The issue remains, thus, sufficiently vexed to make worthwhile a restatement of the argument for the use of punitive imprisonment. Also, the evidence provides clues worth setting forth as to why and when punitive imprisonment developed. Indeed, these are sufficient to make an argument about the relevance of the development to Athenian political history. For the introduction of penal imprisonment in Athens proves an extremely important historical moment, marking as it does both the completion of a general will institutionalized (in a punishment of consumption of the wrong–doer within, rather than of expulsion from, the community) and a significant point in the establishment ofisonomia. (shrink)

Since the establishment of the modern prison system in the early nineteenth century, prisons and prisoners have been construed as sites of moral, social, and biological contagion. Historic and contemporary studies show that most prisoners experience severe health inequalities, higher rates of addiction and mental health issues, and lower life expectancy than the rest of the population. They also come from deprived social strata. Yet, these aspects of Irish penal history have been largely neglected in academia and popular histories. (...) Our article discusses two public history projects—an art installation, _The Trial_, and a museum exhibition, _Living Inside_—that engaged different publics with the long history of health and welfare in Irish prisons. Developed by the research team on the Wellcome Trust Investigator Award “Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000,” based at University College Dublin, the projects adopted different methodologies to engage their audiences and explore the experience and management of health and welfare in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish prisons. We further examine the different methodological approaches of each project, their varied aims and audiences, and the impacts reported by audiences and participants. The article also considers some of the challenges of doing this kind of public history, both in terms of working with marginalized communities and presenting research about difficult subjects to various audiences. (shrink)

Willie Horton probably cost Michael Dukakis the American presidency. Before running, Dukakis served for ten years as governor of Massachusetts and was one of the most vociferous opponents of the death penalty. He also thought prisons to be primarily tools for education and rehabilitation. Dukakis wished the penal system would restore to criminals their lost or forfeited humanity and prepare convicts for a “return to the community”; under his administration, state prisons' inmates were allowed home leaves. Horton failed to (...) return from one of those leaves. Instead, he raped a woman. This is what can be expected when soft-hearted liberals…. (shrink)

Throughout the medieval period law was seen as the product of social groups and associations that formed legal orders, as Max Weber elaborates, "either constituted in its membership by such objective characteristics of birth, political, ethnic, or religious denomination, mode of life or occupation, or arose through the process of explicit fraternization." During the second half of the Middle Ages, roughly the tenth through fifteenth centuries, there were "several distinct types of law, sometimes competing, occasionally overlapping, invariably invoking different traditions, (...) jurisdictions and modes of operation." Types of law included imperial and royal edicts and statutes, canon law, unwritten customary law of tribes and localities, written Germanic law, residual Roman law, municipal statutes, the law of merchants and of guilds, and in England the common law, on the continent the Roman law of jurists after the twelfth century revival of the Justinian Code. The types of courts included various imperial and royal courts, ecclesiastical courts, manorial or seigniorial courts, village courts, municipal courts in cities, merchant courts, and guild courts. Serving as judges in these courts, respectively, were kings or their appointees, Bishops and abbots, barons or lords of the manor or their appointees, local lay leaders, leading burghers, merchants, and members of the guild. These various positions were not wholly separate-many high government officials were in religious orders, while Churches held landed estates that came with local judicial responsibilities. "Bishops, abbots and prioresses, as lords of temporal possessions, controlled manorial or honorial courts at which they sometimes, though not generally, presided in person, exercising responsibility for criminal and customary law." "The result was the existence of numerous law communities," Weber wrote, "the autonomous jurisdictions of which overlapped, the compulsory, political association being only one such autonomous jurisdiction in so far as it existed at all." Jurisdictional rules for judicial tribunals and the laws to be applied related to the persons involved and the subject matter at issue. The personality principle linked law to a person's community or association, and under feudalism property ownership came wrapped together with the right to judge those tied to the property. "Demarcation disputes between these laws and courts were numerous." Jurisdictional conflicts arose especially in relation to ecclesiastical courts, which claimed broad jurisdiction over personal status laws (marriage, divorce, inheritance) and moral crimes, as well as church property and personnel, matters which regularly overlapped with the jurisdiction of other courts. Furthermore, different bodies of law could be applicable in a given court in a given case. "It was common to find many different codes of customary law in force in the same kingdom, town or village, even in the same house, if the ninth century bishop Agobard of Lyons is to be believed when he says, 'It often happened that five mem were present or sitting together, and not one of them had the same law as another.'" In long settled areas, the personal law of communities became local customary law. People living within cities were subject to municipal statutes and customary law on certain matters (penal law, procedural), and the community law to which they were attached. (shrink)

Mistakes are a fact of life, and the criminal law is sadly no exception to the rule. Wrongful convictions are rightfully abhorred, and false acquittals can likewise inspire outrage. In these cases, we implicitly draw a distinction between a court’s finding and a defendant’s actual guilt or innocence. These are intuitive concepts, but as this paper aims to show, contemporary use of the reasonable person standard in the law of self-defense muddles them. -/- Ordinarily, we can distinguish between a person's (...) material guilt or innocence and his juridical guilt or innocence. Someone is materially guilty if his actions in fact matched the conduct proscribed by the penal law. Someone is juridically guilty if he is found guilty by a tribunal, i.e., convicted by a judge or jury. When a tribunal convicts a innocent person or acquits a guilty person, the accuracy of its verdicts can be criticized. -/- There are three definitions of the reasonable person extant amongst courts and commentators: the reasonable person is either (1) a hypothetical ordinary, average person; (2) the embodiment of a community ideal; or (3) an embodiment of an objective ethical standard, i.e., ethical principles independent of community opinion. Nonetheless, after observing the circularity, vagueness, and lack of consistency in the definitions, wise courts and commentators have sometimes resorted to identifying the reasonable person with the judgment of the jury. -/- This piece argues that failure to settle on a fixed definition of the "reasonable person" in the criminal law of self-defense effectively conflates material guilt and innocence and juridical guilt and innocence at the doctrinal level. When courts do not clearly and consistently choose between standards one, two, and three, or when they expressly treat the reasonable person as a form of words standing in for the judgment of the jury, they make it conceptually impossible for observers outside the court system to apply a fixed, definite standard to assess the actual guilt of a person apart from the judgments of tribunals. -/- This paper's main purpose is to identify a conceptual knot rather than propose reforms. Still, it recommends two small changes meant to lift the confusion surrounding the reasonable person. First, it urges that courts expressly settle on one of the three definitions canvassed above. Second, it recommends that courts be mindful of the nature of the reasonable person standard and as such, be wary of treating conclusions about reasonableness as ordinary legal precedents, and wield the power of directed verdict aggressively to protect unpopular defendants from abuse by juries. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 Introduction 1 -- 2 Central themes and critical issues 10 -- Introduction 10 -- Core themes 11 -- Differences which have surfaced in the move from -- margins to mainstream 15 -- The claims of restorative justice: a brief examination 21 -- Some limitations of restorative justice 25 -- Some dangers of restorative justice 29 -- Debunking restorative justice 32 -- 3 Reviving restorative justice traditions 36 -- The rebirth of an ancient practice 36 -- (...) Pre-modem criminal justice 37 -- The renaissance of native justice traditions 43 -- Navajo peacemaking 44 -- Can one characterise ancient and indigenous -- justice as restorative? 47 -- Can one revive restorative justice traditions? 49 -- Conclusion: did restorative justice ever die? 59 -- 4 Healing the victim 62 -- Introduction 62 -- The experiences and needs of victims 64 -- The inadequacy of punitive justice for the victim 67 -- Victim reforms 70 -- Restitution from the offender 74 -- Beyond restitution: restoring victims 76 -- Restorative justice or 'clubbing together'? 78 -- Using victims to rehabilitate offenders 81 -- Paternalism towards victims 83 -- Balancing the needs of the victim with those of society 84 -- 5 A restorative approach to offenders 87 -- Introduction 87 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to retributive justice 88 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to treatment 94 -- The goals and methods of restorative justice in relation -- to offenders 95 -- An alternative to punishment or an alternative form of -- punishment? 106 -- An alternative to treatment? 111 -- 6 Shame, apology and forgiveness 114 -- Introduction 114 -- Restorative cautioning 115 -- The psychological routes of restorative conferencing 116 -- The idea of reintegrative shaming 118 -- Some questions about shaming 123 -- Apology and forgiveness 132 -- 7 Mediation, participation and the role of community 136 -- Introduction: handling criminal conflicts 136 -- The rationale for the restorative justice process 140 -- Achieving restorative goals 141 -- Moral development and the strengthening of community 144 -- The role of community 151 -- 8 The future of restorative justice 161 -- Introduction 161 -- Implementing restorative justice: the paths less likely 163 -- The implementation of restorative techniques 166 -- Restorative justice and the pattern of penal control 169 -- The future of restorative justice research 170 -- Appendix to chapter 3: the theological roots of judicial -- punishment 172. (shrink)

After a transgression has occurred within an organization, a primary concern is the reintegration of the affected parties back into the organizational community. However, beyond offenders and victims, reintegration depends on the views of organizational peers and their desire to interact with these parties. In two studies, we demonstrated that offender amends and victim forgiveness interact to predict peer reintegrative outcomes. We found evidence of backlash against unforgiving victims: Peers wanted to work the least with victims who rejected appropriate amends, (...) thus penalizing them for their failure to contribute to the restoration process. This backlash effect was due to decreased liking of the victim and the perceived failure to repair the offender-victim relationship. These findings demonstrate that peers expect both offenders and victims to do their part to achieve reconciliation following transgression, and both may suffer the consequences of failing to meet peer expectations. Implications for reintegration within organizations are discussed. (shrink)

Focusing democratic theory on the pressing issue of punishment, Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury argues for participatory institutional designs as antidotes to the American penal state. Citizen action in institutions like the jury and restorative justice programs can foster the attunement, reflectiveness, and full-bodied communication needed as foundations for widespread civic responsibility for criminal justice.

Social and environmental ratings provided by social rating agencies are multidimensional. The first goal of our paper is to identify a small number of independent and relevant socially responsible (SR) dimensions reflecting a firms’ coherent posture toward social issues. We put forward that these dimensions are not exactly the same as the ESG ones (Environment, Social, and Governance). Using the six sub-ratings provided by the Vigeo rating agency, we perform a principal component analysis and we highlight three main independent SR (...) dimensions related to (1) business stakeholders (employees, customers, and suppliers), (2) societal stakeholders (environment and society), and (3) financial stakeholders (stockholders and debt holders). The second objective of our paper is to explore the link between stock returns and these three SR dimensions. Our most notable finding is that for each SR dimension, investors ask for an additional risk premium when they accept to hold non-socially responsible stocks. The cost of equity is thus lower for SR firms. The average premium over the period 2003–2010 is larger for the components “business stakeholders” and “financial stakeholders” than for the component “societal stakeholders.” The premium for this last component has only existed since the end of 2008. Since that time, environment and community involvement have become important risk factors strongly considered by investors. For the three dimensions, investors notably penalize large non-social firms and reward small social firms. (shrink)