America frequently talks about impeaching a president, but the impeachment provisions of the American constitution are widely misunderstood. In High Crimes and Misdemeanors, constitutional scholar Frank O. Bowman, III offers unprecedented clarity to the question of impeachment, tracing its roots to medieval England through its adoption in the Constitution and 250 years of American experience. By examining the human and political history of those who have faced impeachment, Bowman demonstrates that the Framers intended impeachment to be a flexible tool, (...) adaptable to the needs of any age. Written in a lively, engaging style, the book combines a deep historical and constitutional analysis of the impeachment clauses, a coherent theory of when impeachment should be used to protect constitutional order against presidential misconduct, and a comprehensive presentation of the case for and against impeachment of President Trump. It is an indispensable work for the present moment. (shrink)

This book charts the historical development of 'forensic objectivity' through an analysis of the ways in which objective knowledge of crimes, crime scenes, crime materials and criminals is achieved. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, with authors drawn from law, history, sociology and science and technology studies, this work shows how forensic objectivity is constructed through detailed crime history case studies, mainly in relation to murder, set in Scotland, England, Germany, Sweden, USA and Ireland. Starting from the (...) mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the present day, the book argues that a number of developments were crucial. These include: the beginning of crime photography, the use of diagrams and models specially constructed for the courtroom so jurors could be ‘virtual witnesses’, probabilistic models of certainty, the professionalization of medical and scientific expert witnesses and their networks, ways of measuring, recording and developing criminal records and the role of the media, particularly newspapers in reporting on crime, criminals and legal proceedings and their part in the shaping of public opinion on crime. This essential title demonstrates the ways in which forensic objectivity has become a central concept in relation to criminal justice over a period spanning 170 years. (shrink)

Recent developments in neuroscience and social science are illuminating the critical importance of regret in human choices, including criminal decision making. After differentiating regret from related emotions (e.g., disappointment, sadness, shame), I argue that regret can prompt desistance from crime and that regret avoidance is a powerful mechanism of conformity. I then turn to American and European penal history to demonstrate that the invention of the prison was premised on the notion that solitary confinement could inculcate regret in (...) prisoners and thereby change them profoundly. The place of regret in both historical and emerging thinking about human choice underscores its importance for understanding the connections between emotions and criminality. (shrink)

Recovering the identity of a people means revisiting their memory, their history and the memories that determine the construction of their identity. This essay seeks to reflect on the impacts of mining, its causes, impasses and consequences on the memory and the construction of local identities, namely those from the affected communities. Considering the collapse of the Fundão/Mariana tailings dam, some ethical-philosophical provocations arise, such as: why do we talk about a crime-disaster and not simply about a disaster (...) or a tailings dam collapse? How can we give a name to this memory of trauma, to what is inexplicable? After all, how do we think about the memory of the community in the aftermath of the collapse? (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)

The suggestion that crime be treated as a public health problem instead of being treated retributively provokes unease for two reasons. Firstly, it is thought to foster impersonal treatment, which is “objectifying” or “dehumanizing.” I argue that practices are problematically impersonal when they bypass or undermine an agent’s ability to take responsibility. However, there is a difference between taken responsibility and retributive responsibility. Skepticism about the latter does not entail skepticism about the former. Skeptics about retributive desert still have (...) strong moral reasons to condemn practices that undermine taken responsibility, so it need not have these dehumanizing implications. Secondly, the association of medicine and crime has a dark history. While this is true, this is largely because medicine has a dark history. Instead of striving to limit things that fall within the boundaries of public health, I argue that the solution is to take a more ethical approach to public health. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the essence of economic security in the Internet environment, to identify and analyze statistical data on this issue. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time a comparison with foreign practice is made. As a result, some places that require improvement in this area are identified, the essence and understanding of new terms are revealed, and the principle of neural networks is explained. This work is (...) devoted to the problem of the spread of economic crime associated with the use of new technologies. In view of the development of the innovative sphere, the emergence of new technologies, there are also new threats to economic security. The article examines the history of cybercrime in the economic sphere, the basic principles of economic security from the side of new technologies, and provides current statistics on economic crimes from the point of view of the loss of information security by economic entities. Recommendations for reducing the level of economic crime in the information environment are formulated. (shrink)

A solution to the problem of “overcriminalization” appears to be decriminalization of certain crimes. This Essay focuses on a group of crimes that has been labeled “proxy crimes” as a candidate to be eliminated. What are proxy crimes? Douglas Husak defines them as “offenses designed to achieve a purpose other than to prevent the conduct they explicitly proscribe.” Michael Moore describes them as involving situations where we “use one morally innocuous act as a proxy for another, morally wrongful act or (...) mental state.” Put that way, proxy crimes seem highly problematic, and Larry Alexander and Kimberly Ferzan bluntly put it, “We reject proxy crimes.” This Essay asks whether we should reject proxy crimes by presenting and evaluating Alexander and Ferzan’s treatment of the subject. After describing several different types of crimes that may be characterized as proxy crimes and Alexander and Ferzan’s rejection of most of them and their arguments for doing so, this Essay argues that their rejection of proxy crimes is incomplete, which leaves their theory open to a range of possibilities regarding the proper place of proxy crimes in criminal law. This Essay concludes that getting a handle on the problem of proxy crimes and overcriminalization requires a theory of the state and an articulation of the proper relationship between the state and its citizens that can give guidance on when the state can demand obedience from citizens to support the state and when failures to comply with such demands render one criminally culpable. Without such a theory, proposals to address overcriminalization cannot travel very far. (shrink)

Gabriel Tarde, along with Durkheim and others, set the foundations for what is today a common-sense statement in social science: crime is a social phenomenon. However, the questions about what social is and what kind of social phenomenon crime is remain alive. Tarde’s writings have answers for both of these capital and interdependent problems and serve to renew our view of them. The aim of this article is to reconstruct Tarde’s definition of crime in terms of genus (...) and specific difference, exploring his criminology as a case of his general sociology. This procedure shows that Tarde succeeded in creating a comprehensive theory of crime and criminals founded not only on his most well-known concept, imitation, but also on his equally important concepts of invention, opposition, social logic and social teleology. For Tarde, crime is a complex phenomenon related to criminal inventions, criminal propagations, the production of penal laws, the execution of controls and punishments, and the collective reactions to all these. (shrink)

This essay enquires into the implications for criminal law of Derrida’s analysis in the Death Penalty seminars. The seminars include a reading of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, specifically Kant’s reflections on the sovereign right to punish, which is read in conjunction with the reflections of Freud and Reik on the relation between the unconscious and crime, as well as Nietzsche’s reflections on morality, punishment and cruelty. What comes to the fore in Derrida’s analysis is a system of economic exchange (...) operating on an unconscious level, of which criminal law forms an intrinsic part. Derrida’s analysis of the ‘origin’ of crime in the seminars poses serious questions to the assumption of freedom underlying modern criminal law. The link, which he posits between punishment and political theology, likewise challenges the existing theories and forms of punishment. What the seminars call for, in the name of the Kantian Enlightenment, is a radical break with economic circularity as it operates in respect of crime and punishment. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point Miri Gur-Arye’s critical discussion of a legal duty to report crime, this paper sketches an idealising conception of a democratic republic whose citizens could be expected to recognise a civic responsibility to report crime, in order to assist the enterprise of a criminal law that is their common law. After explaining why they should recognise such a responsibility, what its scope should be, and how it should be exercised, and noting that that civic (...) responsibility must include a responsibility to report one’s own crimes; it discusses whether that civic responsibility could ground at least a limited legal duty to report certain types of crime. It then turns to the question of whether a civic responsibility to assist the criminal law’s enterprise of bringing wrongdoers to account could include a responsibility to arrest suspected or known offenders if the police cannot or will not do so—a responsibility to make a citizen’s arrest, and the legal power to discharge that responsibility: how far should citizens feel entitled, or duty-bound, thus to ‘take the law into their own hands’? (shrink)

Crime stories attract audiences and social buzz, but they also serve as prisms for perceived threats. As immigration, technological change, and globalization reshape our world, anxiety spreads. Because journalism plays a role in how the public adjusts to moral and material upheaval, this unease raises the ethical stakes. Reporters can spread panic or encourage reconciliation by how they tell these stories. Murder in our Midst uses crime coverage in select North American and Western European countries as a key (...) to examine culturally constructed concepts like privacy, public, public right to know, and justice. Working from close readings of news coverage, codes of ethics and style guides, and personal interviews with almost 200 news professionals, this book offers fertile material for a provocative conversation. We use our findings to divide the ten countries studied into three media models; we explore what the differing coverage decisions suggest about underlying attitudes to criminals and crime, and how justice in a democracy is best served. Today, journalists' work can be disseminated around the world without any consideration of whether what's being told (or how) might dissolve cultural differences or undermine each community's right to set its own standards to best reflect its citizens' values. At present, unique reporting practices persist among our three models, but the internet and social media threaten to dissolve distinctions and the cultural values they reflect. We need a journalism that both opens local conversations and bridges differences among nations. This book is a first step in that direction. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that human rights law and international criminal law share core normative features. Yet, the literature has not yet reconstructed this underlying basis in a systematic way. In this contribution, I lay down the basis of such an account. I first identify a similar tension between a “moral” and a “political” approach to the normative foundations of those norms and to the legitimate role of international courts and tribunals adjudicating those norms. With a view to bring the (...) debate forward, I then turn to the practices of HRL and international criminal law to examine which of those approaches best illuminates some salient aspects of the adjudication of ICs. Finally, I argue that the political approach best explains the practice. While each preserves a distinct role, HRL and ICL both establish the basic conditions for the primary subject of international law, namely the state, to legitimately govern its own subjects constructed as free and equal moral agents. (shrink)

Rates of crime for Blacks in the United States in the post-slavery era have always been high relative to Whites. But explaining, or minimizing, this fact faces a major problem: individual excuses for bad acts point to deficiencies, in the agent, which are perhaps forgivable, such as mental deficiency or a deprived childhood, but at the price of treating the agent as less than a full member of the moral community. Collectivizing excuses risks implying group inferiority. The history (...) of attempts to provide an explanation of crime that mitigates blame without undermining full participation to the moral community is long and convoluted, leading to the presently widespread claim that crime is itself a product of victimization through pervasive racism. Three basic strategies – rejection of comparison, attribution to racially invariant causes and explanation by reference to uniquely Black conditions, such as subculture or extreme stigmatization – are identified and their ethical implications distinguished. (shrink)

This essay considers the relationship between crime, punishment and individual liberty in three main thinkers of the Enlightenment: Montesquieu, Beccaria and Bentham. It examines the development of the idea of a proportion between crime and punishment and challenges the view that the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was engaged in the creation of a new form of oppression through a system of rational punishment which was intended to replace that of the medieval period.

ON DECEMBER 10, 1991 Charles Shonubi, a Nigerian citizen but a resident of the USA, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport for the importation of heroin into the United States.1 Shonubi's modus operandi was ``balloon swallowing.'' That is, heroin was mixed with another substance to form a paste and this paste was sealed in balloons which were then swallowed. The idea was that once the illegal substance was safely inside the USA, the smuggler would pass the balloons and (...) recover the heroin. On the date of his arrest, Shonubi was found to have swallowed 103 balloons containing a total of 427.4 grams of heroin. There was little doubt about Shonubi's guilt. In fact, there was considerable evidence that he had made at least seven prior heroin-smuggling trips to the USA (although he was not tried for these). In October 1992 Shonubi was convicted in a United States District Court for possessing and importing heroin. Although the conviction was only for crimes associated with Shonubi's arrest date of December 10, 1991, the sentencing judge, Jack B. Weinstein, also made a ®nding that Shonubi had indeed made seven prior drug-smuggling trips to the USA. The interesting part of this case was in the sentencing. According to the federal sentencing guidelines, the sentence in cases such as this should depend on the total quantity of heroin involved. This instruction was interpreted rather broadly.. (shrink)

The article discusses the link between freedom, crime and punishment. According to some theorists, crime does not only cause a person to have less freedom; it constitutes, _in and of itself_, a breach of the freedom of others. Punishment does not only cause people to have more freedom, for instance by preventing crimes; it constitutes, _in and of itself_, respect for mutual freedom. If the latter claims are true, crime and punishment must have certain _meanings_ that make (...) them denials/affirmations of freedom irrespective of their consequences. My aim is to show that such an immanent connection between crime/punishment and freedom exists. I do so by explicating the “natural meaning” of crime and punishment. This way of addressing the topic is inspired by Jean Hampton’s use of H. P. Grice’s concept of natural meaning. Expanding on Hampton’s theory, drawing on both H. L. A. Hart and Kant, I argue that crime has the natural meaning of denying freedom, and punishment has the natural meaning of affirming freedom. The paper presents an ideal theory, not a justification for actual criminal justice practices, which in most countries unfortunately fail to instantiate the value of mutual freedom. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that when states commit, assist, or culpably fail to prevent crimes against humanity against their own people, they should, subsequently, have primacy in prosecuting those crimes. They have a presumptive right (and duty) to punish perpetrators, and so a claim against third parties not to do so. In contrast to those who emphasise the importance of national sovereignty, I set out a victim-centred justification for this claim. I argue that victims of crimes against humanity, and (...) members of groups that have been targeted for these crimes, have a special interest in having their status as members of their political community re-affirmed. Punishment by their state of war-related crimes against them has the expressive function of re-affirming their status as equal members of their national community, and the state’s commitment to protecting their rights. I set out some reasons to think that this is valuable for victims and members of targeted groups. These interests, I argue, are weighty enough to ground the primacy of states in prosecution. (shrink)

Systematic killing has long been associated with some of the darkest episodes in human history. Increasingly, however, it is framed as a desirable outcome in war, particularly in the context of military AI and lethal autonomy. Autonomous weapons systems, defenders argue, will surpass humans not only militarily but also morally, enabling a more precise and dispassionate mode of violence, free of the emotion and uncertainty that too often weaken compliance with the rules and standards of war. We contest this (...) framing. Drawing on the history of systematic killing, we argue that lethal autonomous weapons systems reproduce, and in some cases intensify, the moral challenges of the past. Autonomous violence incentivizes a moral devaluation of those targeted and erodes the moral agency of those who kill. Both outcomes imperil essential restraints on the use of military force. (shrink)

The U.S. Catholic Bishops (2000) have endorsed a model of criminal justice that is restorative rather than retributive. Some interpreters of Catholic tradition defend retribution as a necessary feature of responding to crime (e.g., John Finnis). I argue in this paper that this difference is substantive, not merely linguistic. The essential question is what elements of past Catholic thinking about criminal justice are normative for today. I argue that there are strong moral reasons,consistent with both Catholic tradition and larger (...) principles of social justice, to endorse the bishops’ statement on criminal justice reform, and with it a restorativeapproach to crime. (shrink)

In the face of violent crime, mothers are often the most vocal in fighting for justice. When those mothers are also active in a Christian Church, they are well versed in the motifs of sacrifice and forgiveness. From a feminist perspective, these motifs have been severely criticised for weighing more heavily on women than men, given Christianity’s long history of teaching the submission of women and the dominance of men, and, further, have been instrumental in keeping women in (...) abusive relationships. This paper will ask whether: when faced with the traumatic loss of a daughter or son due to the violent actions of another, are the motifs of sacrifice and forgiveness equally problematic or do they help mothers through their grief? Is forgiveness another form of sacrifice required of Christian mothers in the aftermath of violent crime? Does a mother’s fight for justice require that she does not forgive the perpetrator? How do mothers navigate their Christian faith and these varied motifs in recovering from the traumatic grief that they experience following sudden bereavement? This paper will explore these questions by engaging with the accounts of, for example, Julie Nicholson, the Anglican Priest, whose daughter was killed in the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005; Doreen Lawrence, whose son, Stephen, was murdered in a racist attack in London in 1993; Sybrina Fulton and Lucy McBath, whose sons, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, were fatally shot in separate incidents in Florida in 2012; and mothers affected by the Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017. (shrink)

This book uses controversies as a gateway through which to explore the origins, ethics, key moments and people in the history of anthropology. It draws on a variety of cases including complicity in 'human zoos', Malinowski's diaries, and the Human Terrain System to explore how anthropological controversies act as a driving force for change, how they offer a window into the history of and research practice in the discipline, and how they might frame wider debates such as those (...) around reflexivity, cultural relativism, and the politics of representation. The volume provokes discussion about research ethics and practice with tangible examples where grey areas are brought into sharp relief. The controversies examined in the book all involve moral or practical ambiguities that offer an opportunity for students to engage with the debate and the dilemmas faced by anthropologists, both in relation to the specific incidents covered and to the problems posed more generally due to the intimate and political implications of ethnographic research. (shrink)

Hailed by The New York Times as "tantalizing" and "learned," A History of Western Morals brings together an impressive range of knowledge of Western civilization. From the ancient cultures of the Near East, through the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds, to the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason and the twentieth century, Crane Brinton searches human history for the meaning of ethics. A History of Western Morals raises controversial conclusions about the value of (...) religion in society, the practices of sex, the nature of crime and the possibility of progress. (shrink)

As a practising lawyer and judge, it is the insights gained from Stephen's own experience that give an added practical dimension to this work. As well as his accounts of the history of the branches of the law, Stephen gives several fascinating analyses of famous trials, and explores the relation of madness to crime and the relation of law to ethics, physiology, and mental philosophy. His discussion also includes the subjects of criminal responsibility, offences against the state, the (...) criminal jurisdiction of the Privy Council, libel, Indian criminal law and offences against religion. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper considers the establishment of the paradigmatic determinants of the understanding of crime on the basis of fundamental changes in understanding of the essence of a man in ancient, medieval, Renaissance, modern and postmodern philosophy. Theoretical basis. The author determines that the understanding of the concept of crime is possible only in the combination of historical, philosophical, legal and sociological approaches. The interpretation of the essence of this concept dynamics and relevant legal practices is based on (...) structuralist, post-structuralist and hermeneutical methodological principles. Originality. The author has proved that the concept of "crime" is not a constant but a historically variable category whose dynamics of meanings is linked to a change in philosophical anthropological paradigms. Its understanding is primarily related to the interpretation of the essence of a man and the imperatives of his behavior. This allows a new understanding of the philosophical foundations of modern criminology. Conclusions. The article establishes that in the history of Western philosophy, there are five anthropological paradigms that differ in a thorough rethinking of the essence of a man. The first cosmocentric regards man as a microcosm, his soul and actions must be in harmony with the harmony of the Cosmos. The second Theocentric considers a man the image and likeness of God, though he is at the same time burdened with original sin. In the era of early Modernism, the third paradigm, which we called cognitive-centric, becomes dominant, since the essence of a man is reduced primarily to his mind. It gradually changes to the fourth – sociocentric, which focuses on the social essence of a man. However, despite its continued existence in our time, at the end of the XX century, there is a transition to the fifth paradigm – postmodernist, which deconstructs the essence of a man, reducing it to the role of an element of power systems. These paradigms, with a certain synchronicity, create the corresponding concepts of "crime": from violation of polis-space laws to identification with sin, from non-observance of mental and moral standards to social deviance. Contemporary understandings of crime are, for the most part, relativistic and constructivist, which is consistent with the postmodern anthropological paradigm. However, the diversity of interpretations of the concept of "crime" that exists in the current scientific literature needs further comprehension. (shrink)

This article examines the nonhistoricist higher-order compatibilist theory of moral responsibility devised and defended by Harry G. Frankfurt. Intuitions about certain kinds of cases of moral responsibility cast significant doubt on the wide irrelevancy clause of the nonhistoricist feature of Frankfurt’s theory. It will be argued that, while the questions of the nature and ascription of moral responsibility must be separated in doing moral responsibility theory, the questions of whether or not and the extent to which an agent is morally (...) responsible for performing certain kinds of actions cannot be settled without also answering the question of the history of that agent’s attitudes, preferences, etc. which may have contributed to the agent’s performing such actions. Thus Frankfurt’s repeated claim that the history of an agent’s action is “irrelevant” to the question of that agent’s moral responsibility for it is rendered dubious, thereby rendering problematic the strongly nonhistoricist component of his theory. The methodological difference between my challenge to Frankfurt’s nonhistoricism and those of others is that, while others have challenged Frankfurt’s nonhistoriciams by way of thought experiments involving hyper-manipulation, mine presents a set of counter-examples to his nonhistoricism which emanate from morality and the law. Indeed, if my counter-example is plausible, then Frankfurt’s nonhistoricism cannot make good sense of some standard instances of racism. Furthermore, while many believe that racist hate crimes ought to be punished more heavily than crimes committed absent hate, the argument herein provides reasons for mitigating, rather than increasing, the responsibility and punishments of many such crimes. What matters in such cases is the extent to which the hatred accompanying said crimes has a history in the agent’s life, one which makes it significantly difficult for her to do other than what she did in committing the racist crime. (shrink)

Since the official history-writing is a defining aspect for the formation and consolidation of nation-states, it is crucial to explore the attempts to legitimize particular discourses regarding historical atrocities. The selective representations of the past, in this regard, contradict counter-memories and propagate hegemonic patterns of remembrance and/or forgetting of past crimes. This article accordingly addresses how the representations of counter-memories as threats to national security and the silencing of gender-specific experiences and remembrances by sanctioned historical narratives become manifest in (...) the history-making of the Turkish nation-state. By focusing on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as two cases of crimes against humanity, it is intended to discuss the shifting positions and roles that the Turkish state adopts in the remembering and forgetting of historical offences. The article argues that through prioritizing national security and national interests, the securitization of memory reconstructs collective traumas of distinct ethnic and religious groups on the basis of a nation-state’s perceived internal and external threats. It also claims that the competing voices of women and their distinct experiences and patterns of remembrance and forgetting past atrocities are suppressed for the sake of the preservation of national security. By incorporating the issue of gender into the debate on the securitization of memory, this article elucidates the mismatch between positions of femininity and masculinity within the official national historiography of the Turkish state. (shrink)

In criminal proceedings, offenders are sentenced based on doctrines of culpability and punishment that theorize why they are guilty and why they should be punished. Throughout human history, these doctrines have largely been grounded in legal-policy constructions around retribution, safety, deterrence, and closure, mostly derived from folk psychology, natural philosophy, sociocultural expectations, public-order narratives, and common sense. On these premises, justice systems have long been designed to account for crimes and their underlying intent, with experience and probabilistic assumptions shaping (...) theoretical discourses on the nature of crimes and offenders’ punishability. As scientific discoveries, inventions, and methodologies progressively developed to refine such doctrines and displace long-held assumptions, criminal courtrooms have increasingly witnessed counsels and judges relying on scientific evidence to submit, dispute, or validate claims. For instance, over the last century, criminal courtrooms have selectively admitted neuroscientific models, exams, and insights claiming to revolutionize our understanding of who is culpable and deserving of punishment. Most recently, advancements in epigenetics have promised even more profound challenges to long-standing criminal law doctrines. This article examines the reasons reversibility and inheritability of epigenetic markers might warrant revising culpability and punishment and concludes that epigenetic findings are not yet robust enough to justify such revisions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a solution to a problem that arises from the fact that people who commit crimes under the influence of serious mental disorders may still have a capacity to refuse treatment. Several ethicists have argued that the present legislation concerning involuntary treatment of people with mental disorder is discriminatory and should change to the effect that psychiatric patients can refuse care on the same grounds as patients in somatic care. However, people with mental (...) disorders who have committed crimes and been exempted from criminal responsibility would then fall outside the scope of criminal justice as well as that of the psychiatric institutions if they were to refuse care. In this paper, I present and develop a solution to how society should deal with this group of people, called Advance criminal responsibility. The basic idea being that if a person with a potentially responsibility exempting psychiatric condition refuses care, that person is responsible for any future criminal acts which are due to the mental disorder. (shrink)

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a group as such. What makes groups important, over and above the individual worth of the group's members? This paper explores Hannah Arendt's efforts to answer that question, and concludes that she failed. In the course of the argument, it examines her understanding of Jewish history, her ideas about “the social,” and her conception of “humanity” as a normative stance toward international responsibility rather than a descriptive concept.

I offer a discussion of the criminological sociology of Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936). While Tönnies is generally well known for his theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, his elaborate contributions to the sociological study of crime have been almost entirely neglected in the history of sociology. Situated within Tönnies’ general theoretical perspective, I present the central themes of Tönnies’ study of crime and discuss its conceptual and methodological characteristics as a distinct approach in criminological sociology. I additionally center on (...) the importance of Tönnies’ criminological work for the reception and status of his sociological theory. I argue that the neglect of Tönnies’ crime studies has led to overlooking Tönnies’ aspiration to integrate sociological theory and empirical inquiry, which has contributed to misconstrue his unique conception of social order. (shrink)

Are we justified in keeping the demented in prison for crimes they committed when they were still healthy? The answer to this question is an issue of considerable practical importance. The problem arises in cases where very aged criminals exhibit symptoms of dementia while serving their sentence. In these cases, one may wonder whether lodging these criminals in penal institutions rather than in normal caretaking facilities is justifiable. In this paper, I argue that there are justificatory reasons for punishing the (...) demented for their past crimes. In part 2, I examine three theories of punishment—retributivism, prevention theories and expressivism—with regard to the question of whether they provide justificatory reasons for punishing the demented. I argue that only expressivism provides these reasons. In part 3, I defend the view that expressivism, though not convincing as a general theory of punishment, is plausible if applied only to a specific subclass of punitive actions. More precisely, expressivism, or so I argue, is plausible with regard to those acts of punishment that consist in intending to inflict suffering without actually inflicting suffering. Since the punishment of demented patients falls within this class, it can be justified on an expressivist basis. In part 4, I discuss six objections to my view and rebut them. (shrink)

Technology is pervasive in current police practices, and has been for a long time. From CCTV to crime mapping, databases, biometrics, predictive analytics, open source intelligence, applications and a myriad of other technological solutions take centre stage in urban safety management. But before efficient use of these applications can be made, it is necessary to confront a series of challenges relating to the organizational structures that will be used to manage them, to their technical capacities and expectations, and to (...) weigh up the positive and negative external factors at play at the intersection between technology, society and urban management. The paper contributes to this discussion by looking into the dynamics that drive technological uptake in the field of urban safety, the different theories underpinning the relationship between crime and space, and the history and technological characteristics of Geographic Information Systems to later present specific case studies and practical examples of crime mapping systems. Finally, addressing matters related to organisational constraints, technological possibilities and societal impact from a critical point of view, the paper lays out guidelines to ensure that using technology to manage urban safety does not result in increased victimisation, inequalities or inefficiency. Taking one of the longest established technology used in police practice, crime mapping, and using a multidisciplinary, critical approach to escape technological solutionism and bridge the gap between the academic literature and policy needs and recommendations, this paper sends a cautionary tale to those hoping that technology alone can solve complex urban and social problems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stewart R. Sutherland LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT OF some novels it is possible to argue with justification that the problems of interpretation and understanding begin on the first page. Of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment it is possible to contend that the problems of interpretation and understanding begin on the title page. The terms "crime" and "punishment" are overtly moral. The novel is read (...) in the context of a title which exhibits its values where they may be seen by all. What significance must we attach to the choice of such a title? It is possible that the title gives to us a characterization of the content of the novel which, retrospectively, we can only regard as either self-consciously ironical, or perhaps pathetically so, but how are we to decide whether this is more than a possibility? Having raised this question, I propose to set it aside in the hope of returning to it equipped with the experience derived from a number of literary and philosophical digressions. The literary and conceptual style of critical comment upon a novel often betrays much that is definitive of the response being elucidated. If one compares and contrasts Philip Rahv's essay on Crime and Punishment with the appropriate chapter of Mochulsky's Dostoevsky,2 the implication of this general claim may be clarified. My intention here is to use largely ostensive means to suggest the radically different accounts of the novel given to us by these two writers. That the conclusions are different is hardly in need of statement. What is worth examining is the character of the language and of the arguments used to substantiate those conclusions. The point of my discussion will rest not upon assessing the accuracy or legitimacy of particular judgments, but rather upon delineating the general contours of the intellectual contexts in which these judgments are offered. 223 224Philosophy and Literature Rahv's focus is on the character or psyche of Raskolnikov. The novel is seen largely in the form of a psychological study of the mind of the murderer. He reminds us that a central problem for Raskolnikov, for the reader, and for Dostoyevsky himself, is the identification of Raskolnikov's motive—not that there is an absence of motives, indeed quite the reverse: "He is soon lost in the maze of his own motivation" (p. 20). His mind spins incessantly upon an axis the nature of which is nowhere made unambiguously apparent. Nor, it seems, can we replace our search for a motive, or the sufficient reason for action, by identifying a supreme assertion of will: again, on the contrary, we are told, "Dostoyevsky is the first novelist to have fully accepted and dramatized the principle of uncertainty or indeterminacy in the presentation of character" (p. 21). Despite that, however, the success of the novel rests upon Dostoyevsky's skills in allying the insight "... that human consciousness is inexhaustible and incalculable" (p. 19), to "his capacity to combine [seeming contradictions] in a single brain and a single psyche, while staving off the danger of incoherence at one end and of the specious reconciliation at the other..." (p. 38). The mood ofRahv's treatment of the novel is dominated in this way by the language of (largely popularized) psychology—"pathological depression," "nameless guilt-feelings," "wishful fantasy"—and not surprisingly, he sees his own preoccupations as mirroring those of Dostoyevsky: "What Dostoyevsky has done in revising Raskolnikov's justification is to convert into a theory of human nature what is in Hegel not a psychological theory at all but a theory of men as subjects and objects of history" (p. 34). Mochulsky, on the other hand, breathes a very different atmosphere. From the outset he talks of "the spiritual existence of Dostoyevsky's heroes," and he says of a man who wills a murder or one who "betrays himself to the powers of dark necessity" (pp. 302-303), "The murderer has stepped beyond something more than the moral law: the very basis ofthe spiritual worlditself" (p. 303). "The whole tragedy of man-godhood," he tells us, "is expressed in these few words: 'It seems to me,' Raskolnikov says, 'truly great people experience an immense... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Individualization of Crime in Medieval Canon LawVirpi Mäkinen and Heikki PihlajamäkiIn The Mourning of Christ (c. 1305, fresco at Cappella dell'Arena, Padua, Italy), Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267-1337) depicts the Virgin Mary embracing Christ for the last time after he has been taken down from the cross. Whereas his predecessors in the devotional Byzantine tradition concentrated on flat, still figures, Giotto emphasizes their humanity and individuality. The (...) grief on the Virgin's face is touching and convincing but in a slightly different way than the sorrow experienced by St. John or the other accompanying figures. Even the ten angels following the scene seem to grieve for the Redeemer in their own personal way. The individuality of Giotto's figures may not seem much if we compare it with the seventeenth-century Flemish masters. Giotto's Virgin and her company still show a restraint in their grief which does not seem entirely natural. In late medieval art, however, Giotto's approach was fresh and new, reflecting a trend toward individualization which was not peculiar merely to art but was taking over many other areas of late medieval life as well. Philosophy, theology, and law—the medieval scientiae—were all putting increasing emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of the individual.Nor does this trend leave criminal law and the law of evidence untouched. The medieval development of law was just as revolutionary as the development of other branches of knowledge. Starting in early twelfth-century Bologna, the Corpus Iuris Civilis became an object of systematic academic research and teaching for the first time in history. The development of canon law was perhaps even more striking. Positive, enacted law first became not only an object of academic studies but also an instrument of social engineering in the domain of church law. The hierarchical structure of the worldwide Catholic Church was built and run in conjunction with positive, enacted legislation.1 [End Page 525] The development of criminal law was just as innovative as the changes that took place in other branches of law, with canon lawyers taking the lead. Aspiring for universal power and competing for it with secular rulers, the Church was in need of an efficient system to control disobedient priests and monks and suppress heretical movements.2 The traditional system of criminal control was clearly not sufficient. Canon law, making use of the contemporary trend toward increased individualization in theology, philosophy, and Roman law, was developed to meet the church's need to master the situation.One of the most important and influential developments in thirteenth-century criminal law concerned the individual's criminal intention and responsibility. Before the change criminal responsibility was mainly based on the consequences of a crime. The canon lawyers began to determine different modes of subjective responsibility. In the law of criminal evidence the individual was also shifted from the margins to the center of attention. Earlier criminal evidence had been produced from sources external to the individuality of the defendant, such as oaths, compurgators, and ordeals. In the thirteenth century and with the development of the so-called statutory or legal theory of proof, increasing attention was paid to the stories of both the defendant (in the form of confessions) and the witnesses. The development of criminal law and criminal procedure in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can be understood in the context of the simultaneous trend toward individualization that took place in moral philosophy and theology as well as in canon law.3 These connections are not the only way of understanding the modernization of canon criminal law, for the prevailing view sees the transformation in conjunction with the twelfth-century hierarchization and centralization of church bureaucracy. The particular form that the criminal law and law of proof assumed in these changes did not arise out of a vacuum but, however, has to be understood in relation to the neighboring fields of thought.The Human Will and the Individual in Medieval Moral PhilosophyThe primus motor of medieval philosophy, Aristotelianism, encountered its first competing theories in the thirteenth century. One of the most far-reaching ideas concerning human psychology and behavior, developed by the Franciscans... (shrink)

This book explores how the design, construction, and use of robotics technology may affect today's legal systems and, more particularly, matters of responsibility and agency in criminal law, contractual obligations, and torts. By distinguishing between the behaviour of robots as tools of human interaction, and robots as proper agents in the legal arena, jurists will have to address a new generation of "hard cases." General disagreement may concern immunity in criminal law (e.g., the employment of robot soldiers in battle), personal (...) accountability for certain robots in contracts (e.g., robo-traders), much as clauses of strict liability and negligence-based responsibility in extra-contractual obligations (e.g., service robots in tort law). Since robots are here to stay, the aim of the law should be to wisely govern our mutual relationships. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:January 25, 2012 (9:31 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3102\russell 31,2 064 red.wpd 1 See Russell’s exposure of this derogatory contraction of “Viet Nam Cong San” (“Vietnamese Communists”) in his War Crimes in Vietnam (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 45n. On the importance of language, cf. the legendary remark of Russell’s correspondent, Mohammad Ali: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.… No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” Russell attempted (...) to enlist Ali on behalf of the iwct (see the ra for their letters of 8 April, 18, 31 May, 11 Sept., 17 Oct., 15 Nov. and 16 Dec. 1967). russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 31 (winter 2011–12): 167–87 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes A SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL: LONDON, STOCKHOLM AND ROSKILDE Stefan Andersson [email protected] i.wintroduction T he International War Crimes Tribunal (iwct) on the United States’ warfare in Vietnam was founded in 1966 through the moral outrage of the British philosopher and political activist Bertrand Russell, his private secretary Ralph Schoenman, Ken Coates, Chris Farley and other people connected to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. They wanted to inform the world about the us government’s attempts to convince the Vietnamese population (who were mainly peasants) that capitalism is a better political-economical system than communism, by killing as many “Vietcong”1 and unarmed seniors, women and children as possible with regular carpet bombing, cluster and phosphorus bombs, napalm, Agent Orange and other illegal weaponry, and oTering the survivors pleasant lodgingsinwired-inhamlets far away from their homes and the graves of their ancestors. This charm oTensive went on for more than ten years, and although three times as many bombs fell on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as were dropped during the whole Second World War, surprisingly enough the Vietnamese were not to be converted. In the 1960s this macabre spectacle could be watched on television all over the world, but very few protested against it. Until 1968 the majority of American January 25, 2012 (9:31 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3102\russell 31,2 064 red.wpd 168 stefan andersson 2 See Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (New York, New American Library, 1968). He met up with Noam Chomsky, “a slim sharp-featured man with an ascetic expression, and an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity” (p. 180). Both were arrested and spent a night in prison together. 3 See Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 348. See also Natalie Atkin, “From Margin to Mainstream: American Peace Movements, 1950s– 1970s”, in issue “Peace Movements in Western Europe, Japan and the usa since 1945”, Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, no. 32 (2004): 175–92. 4 See May 1970: Birth of the Antiwar University (New York: PathWnder P., 1971). 5 The so-called “Chicago conspiracy trials” or “Chicago 7 trials” that followed, when sevendefendants—AbbieHoTman,JerryRubin,DavidDellinger,TomHayden,Rennie Davis, John Froines and Lee Weiner—were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot, showed that the us government was not going to tolerate such “unpatriotic” and “criminal ” behaviour. See James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical PaciWsm from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1996), pp. 145–51. 6 See Mark Kurlansky, 1968: the Year That Rocked the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), and David Caute, 1968: the Year of the Barricades (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), pp. 3, 7–8, 12z–13. 7 Fredrik Logevall, “De Gaulle, Neutralization, and American Involvement in Vietnam, 1963–1964”, PaciWc Historical Review 61 (1992): 69–102. citizens were for the war, although some earlier, well-attended rallies against it, like the 1967 march on the Pentagon in late October,2 might have made some think diTerently. sds (Students for a Democratic Society)3 and other antiwar organizations never became the united force that could challenge the government ’s reliance on what Nixon called the “silent majority”. It was not until the us attacked Cambodia... (shrink)

Although the specific subject matter is the psychology of crime, which aims at "concrete knowledge of criminal man in situation," the general problems of method in the humane sciences, of the nature and dynamics of interhuman relations, of experience, and especially of value, are treated here in a way which brings their philosophical import to light. Hesnard emphasizes that truly psychopathological criminals are the minority, and sees crime as a peculiar form of breakdown within a world of lived (...) values. The criminal psychologist's job is not to assess degrees of "responsibility" in terms of psychic sickness, nor to explain causal histories of criminal acts, but to comprehend the total man by focussing upon what society's laws call crime. This is an informative, daring book, rich with unsolved problems, and deserving of much better editing than it received.--C. D. (shrink)

The fundamental principle is that "we are good" -- "we" being the state we serve -- and what "we" do is dedicated to the highest principles, though there may be errors in practice. In a typical illustration, according to the retrospective version at the left-liberal extreme, the properly reshaped Vietnam War began with "blundering efforts to do good" but by 1969 had become a "disaster" -- by 1969, after the business world had turned against the war as too costly and (...) 70 per cent of the public regarded it as "fundamentally wrong and immoral", not "a mistake"; by 1969, seven years after Kennedy's attack on South Vietnam began, two years after the most respected Vietnam specialist and military historian Bernard Fall warned that "Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity... is threatened with extinction...[as]... the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size"; by 1969, the time of some of the most vicious state terrorist operations of one of the major crimes of the late 20th century, of which Swift Boats in the deep South, already devastated by saturation bombing, chemical warfare and mass murder operations, were the least of the atrocities underway. But the reshaped history prevails. Serious expert panels ponder the reasons for "America's Vietnam Obsession" during the 2004 elections, when the Vietnam War was never even mentioned -- the actual one, that is, not the image reconstructed for history. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which suspects attempt to make putative victims/complainants at least partially responsible for the incidents for which they are investigated, transforming themselves into the victim and the other into the perpetrator. Drawing upon conversation analysis, I examine audio-recorded police interviews for low-level crimes in England and in which suspects have constructed what I refer as counter-denunciations. I argue that suspects accomplish these counter-denunciations through discursive practices that involve, for example (a) contrasting the complainant’s actions with (...) their own innocent conduct; (b) historicizing the event being investigated; and (c) discrediting the complainant’s character—stigmatizing. These practices have in common the suspects’ reliance on the relational and contextual character of the categories ‘offender’ and ‘victim’. (shrink)

Nirbhaya, Asifa, Manisha Valmiki, and the list of victims, (be it women, children or men) in India goes on. There is myriad of legislations enacted in the past to curb the offences, but the crimes in the society seem to be unstoppable. During the COVID time, in the lockdown too, the crimes continued to take place. There were several instances of domestic violence and rapes heard in news. Many instances of suicides were reported. It is really difficult to understand what (...) place in the country is safe for the existence and peaceful survival of any person? The question that arises is whether a victim who comes before the court is provided with the adequate relief? Has the Judiciary or the Parliament done something with this regard? Does the concept of compensatory jurisprudence exist in India? What more is required to be done to enhance the position of victims and rehabilitate them? The research article shall look into the concept of compensatory jurisprudence with respect to India and other nation states as well. There are prevailing enormous laws which discuss about the punishment to be given to the accused person guilty to have committed crime, but unfortunately, there is no specific law regarding the steps to be taken to rehabilitate a victim who has been the subject matter of any crime. The research paper shall deal with various aspects and try to analyse laws or rules, if any, existing with regard to the protection of victims in India or around the globe. It shall also try to look into the role that the States play in rehabilitating and compensating the sufferers and victims of various crimes. The article shall conclude with suggestions as to how the research gaps related to victim reparation be filled. (shrink)

Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2023, Page 103-126.

800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false RO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Suicide attack has become a dangerous trend in the contemporary history of some Asian societies. While it has been used by some people as a means of protest, it has been largely rejected by humanity for its severe debilitating effects. Instances of suicide attack can be found in the contexts of the Israel-Palestine conflict, September 11 attacks, Bali bombing, Sunni-Shiite disagreement, struggle of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, (...) as well as the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by foreign powers. The recent contours of suicide attacks are basically largely related to various groups or organizations. The paper therefore examines the meaning, brief history, and the causes of suicide attack, and analyzes these within the purview of contemporary Islamic thought which is based on the textual arguments of the Qur'an and Sunnah. The paper concludes that though a tiny fraction of the whole Muslim spectrum tries to justify the suicide attack as a "weapon of the weak", the majority of the Muslim scholars has viewed it as a crime against humanity and therefore vehemently rejects this practice in any form. (shrink)