Criminal Law and Criminology : oso

The Multicultural Prison

Coretta Phillips — 2013-01-24

Author:: Coretta Phillips
ISBN:: 9780199697229
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697229.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

The Multicultural Prison presents a unique sociological analysis of the daily negotiation of ethnic difference within the closed world of the male prison. The political economy of racialized incarceration together with penal expansion has seen the disproportionate incarceration of diverse British national, foreign and migrant populations, brought into close proximity within the confines of the prison. The impact of broad social changes - globalised migration, the deepening of North-South economic inequalities, and the assertion of minority groups' claims for social and political recognition and equality — are considered at a time when issues of race, multiculture, and racialization inside the prison have been somewhat neglected. Recognising also the significance of religion, age, masculinity, national and local identifications, it considers how multiple identities configure social interactions among prisoners in late modern prisoner society. Using rich empirical material drawn from extensive qualitative research in Rochester Young Offenders' Institution and Maidstone prison, the negotiation and tensions of ‘doing multiculturalism’ in prison form the central part of this book. Prisoners' vivid accounts of economically and socially marginalised lives outside, some in multicultural, some in monocultural settings, provides a backdrop to the interior world of the prison where ethnicity shapes social relations but in a contingent fashion. Ethnic, faith, and masculine identities may be deeply invested in, disavowed, constituted through loose solidarities based on 'postcode identities', even providing a means for cultural hybridity in prison cultures, yet they can also act as a familiar fault line creating wary, unstable, and antagonistic relations among prisoners. The Multicultural Prison provides a unique insight into how race is written into prison social relations using stories from both white and minority ethnic prisoners. It considers challenging issues of discrimination, inequality, entitlement, and preferential treatment from the perspective of diverse groups of prisoners.

Just Sentencing

Richard S. Frase — 2013-01-24

Author:: Richard S. Frase
ISBN:: 9780199757862
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199757862.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book presents a hybrid sentencing model integrating theory and practice. The theory is an expanded version of limiting retributivism that accommodates crime control and other nonretributive purposes of punishment, including utilitarian proportionality and minimizing racial disparity. The model’s procedures are inspired by the best American state guidelines systems and the revised Model Penal Code. A hybrid sentencing theory is normatively superior and practically necessary. It is unreasonable to propose a purely retributive or purely crime-control model that ignores competing values, and any one-dimensional model would not succeed in practice or even be adopted (all modern sentencing systems recognize both retributive and crime-control goals). Sentencing procedures must likewise achieve an acceptable balance, especially between two strongly competing procedural ideals—rule versus discretion—each of which has important advantages. Rules promote consistency and predictability; discretion promotes flexibility and efficiency (parsimony). Procedures must also strike a workable balance in the use of custodial and noncustodial sentencing options, and in the powers of systemic and case-level decision makers (the legislature, sentencing commission, judges, attorneys, and correctional officials). Sentencing guidelines are usually seen as reflecting strong preferences for rules over discretion, and for system-wide over case-level policymaking, but that is not how the best state guidelines systems actually work. Like the proposed model, these systems structure sentencing discretion but leave judges and other officials with a substantial degree of discretion to tailor the form and severity of sanctions to the facts of particular cases so as to achieve justice, effective crime control, and efficiency.

International Criminal Justice at the Yugoslav Tribunal

Mohamed Shahabuddeen — 2013-01-24

Author:: Mohamed Shahabuddeen
ISBN:: 9780199670826
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199670826.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

International criminal justice has undergone rapid recent development. Since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the following year, the field has changed beyond recognition. The traditional immunity of presidents or heads of government, prime ministers, and other functionaries acting in an official capacity no longer prevails; the doctrine of superior orders is inapplicable except, where appropriate, as in mitigation; and the gap between international armed conflict and non-international armed conflict has closed. More generally, the bridge has been crossed between the irresponsibility of the state and the criminal responsibility of the individual. As a result, the traditional impunity of the state has practically gone. This book assesses some of the workings of the ICTY that have shaped these developments. It provides an insightful overview of the nature of this criminal court, established on behalf of the whole of the international community. It reflects on its transformation into one of the leading fora for the growth of international criminal law first-hand, offering a unique perspective on the challenges it has faced.

'Grooming' and the Sexual Abuse of Children

Anne-Marie McAlinden — 2013-01-24

Author:: Anne-Marie McAlinden
ISBN:: 9780199583720
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583720.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book critically examines the official and popular discourses on grooming, predominantly framed within the context of on-line sexual exploitation and abuse committed by strangers, and institutional child abuse committed by those in positions of trust. Set against the broader theoretical framework of risk, security, and governance, this book argues that due to the difficulties of drawing clear boundaries between innocuous and harmful motivations towards children, pre-emptive risk-based criminal law and policy are inherently limited in preventing, targeting, and criminalising ‘grooming’ behaviour prior to the manifestation of actual harm. Through examination of grooming against the complexities of the onset of sexual offending against children and its actual role in this process, the book broadens existing discourses by providing a fuller, more nuanced conceptualisation of grooming, including its role in intra-familial and extra-familial contexts. There is also timely discussion of new and emerging forms of grooming, such as ‘street’ or ‘localised’ grooming, as typified by recent cases in Rochdale and Oldham, and ‘peer-to-peer’ grooming. The book draws on extensive empirical research in the form of over fifty interviews with professionals, working in the fields of sex offender risk assessment, management, or treatment, as well as child protection or victim support in the four jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

Principles and Values in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice

Lucia Zedner and Julian V. Roberts — 2012-09-20

Author:: LuciaZednerProfessor of Criminal Justice, Faculty of Law and Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, and Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Law University of New South Wales, SydneyJulian V.RobertsProfessor of Criminology, University of Oxford
ISBN:: 9780199696796
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696796.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Celebrating the scholarship of Andrew Ashworth, Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, this book explores questions of principle and value in criminal law and criminal justice. Internationally renowned for elaborating a body of principles and values that should underpin criminalization, the criminal process, and sentencing, Ashworth's contribution to the field over forty years of scholarship has been immense. Advancing his project of exploring normative issues at the heart of criminal law and criminal justice, the chapters examine the important and fascinating debates in which Ashworth's influence has been greatest. The chapters fall into three distinct but related areas, reflecting Ashworth's primary spheres of influence. Those in Part 1 address the import and role of principles in the development of a just criminal law, with contributions focusing upon core tenets such as the presumption of innocence, fairness, accountability, the principles of criminal liability, and the grounds for defences. Part 2 addresses questions of human rights and due process protections in both domestic and international law. In Part 3 the chapters are addressed to core issues in sentencing and punishment: they explore questions of equality, proportionality, adherence to the rule of law, the totality principle (in respect of multiple offences), wrongful acquittals, and unduly lenient sentences. Together they demonstrate how important Ashworth's work has been in shaping how we think about criminal law and criminal justice, and make their own invaluable contribution to contemporary discussions of criminalization and punishment.

International Prosecutors

Luc Reydams, Jan Wouters, and Cedric Ryngaert — 2012-09-20

Author:: LucReydamsAssociate Professional Specialist, Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USAJanWoutersJean Monnet Chair Ad Personam EU and Global Governance Professor of International Law and International Organizations Director, Leuven Centre for Global Governance StudiesCedricRyngaertAssistant Professor of International Law at the Universities of Leuven and Utrecht
ISBN:: 9780199554294
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554294.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book examines the prosecution as an institution and a function in a dozen international and hybrid criminal tribunals, from Nuremberg to the International Criminal Court. It is the result of a sustained collaborative effort among some twenty scholars and (former) tribunal staffers. The starting point is that the prosecution shapes a tribunal's practice and legacy more than any other organ and that a systematic examination of international prosecutors is therefore warranted. The chapters are organized chronologically, according to the successive phases of the life of the institution and the various stages of the trials. The analysis includes each institution's establishment, mandate, and jurisdiction, as well as the prosecutorial framework and strategy, the prosecutor's external relations, and the completion of the institution's work. The book also considers the prosecutors'independence and impartiality, and their accountability for their decisions. The volume thus provides a picture of the mandate, organization, and operation of the prosecution in international criminal trials.

The Insecurity State

Peter Ramsay — 2012-09-20

Author:: Peter Ramsay
ISBN:: 9780199581061
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199581061.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book presents a theory of the recent emergence of a right to security and of its protection by the criminal law in the UK. It states that the protection of such a right makes sense of the liabilities found in much of the expansive criminal legislation enacted under that government. This book identifies the normative source of the right to security in the idea of vulnerable autonomy. It demonstrates that this idea is axiomatic to political theories that have enjoyed a preponderant influence across the political mainstream, well beyond the ranks of the Labour government. It considers the continuing influence of these normative commitments on the Coalition government's policy. The book explores how the contemporary criminal law's institutionalization of a right to security differs from the law's earlier protection of security interests. It exposes the paradox presented by laws that declare their own lack of authority by threatening punishments that are justified on the assumption that the normal condition of the representative subject of law is one of feeling vulnerable to criminal victimization. The book presents unorthodox criminal law theory in two respects. First, it offers an explanatory political sociology of a contemporary trend in the criminal law's ‘special part’ rather than a philosophical treatment of the law's general principles. Second, rather than applying a pre-existing sociological or philosophical theory to the law, it develops its theoretical explanation from a detailed legal analysis and reconstruction of New Labour's flagship criminal justice policy, the Anti-Social Behaviour Order.

Homicide and the Politics of Law Reform

Jeremy Horder — 2012-09-20

Author:: Jeremy Horder
ISBN:: 9780199561919
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199561919.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book begins with the story of efforts to reform the law of homicide in England and Wales. Having wrested control over the direction of reform from the judiciary, successive governments have been content to oversee a narrowly focused, pluralist model of reform. Under this model, individuals and interest groups — extending to bureaucratised lay bodies representing a variety of special interests — compete for a reforming influence with civil servants and ministers. However, what has remained neglected is any serious attempt by government to discover the views of the general public on homicide law reform. The book argues that comprehensive research into, and a degree of deference to, public opinion on the scope of homicide is essential to the reform process. It is essential principally as a means of conferring true legitimacy on homicide reform in a democracy. Elite or expert opinion alone will never authentically secure such legitimacy. A true liberal democracy will build in to legislation opportunities for citizens in good conscience periodically to oppose cherished liberal principles currently governing homicide law. The book goes on to examine many of the key issues in the current law, such as the ever-weakening case for ‘partial’ defences to murder, the need to hold public authorities to account for corporate manslaughter, secondary liability for murder, the case for ‘one-punch’ manslaughter, and the bureaucratisation of some forms of homicide, such as causing death by dangerous driving, that have departed in their structure and operation from the common law manslaughter principles that formerly governed them.

The Future of Criminology

Rolf Loeber and Brandon C. Welsh — 2012-09-20

Author:: RolfLoeberDepartment of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of PittsburghBrandon C.WelshNortheastern University
ISBN:: 9780199917938
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199917938.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Criminology is a dynamic and evolving field of study. In recent decades, the study of the causes, development, prevention, and treatment of juvenile delinquency and adult crime has produced many important discoveries. This volume address two questions about crucial topics facing criminology—from causation to prevention to public policy: Where are we now? What does the future hold? This book has been written by more than forty scholars from across the world. Chapters present the future of research, policy, and practice in the discipline. They examine five important areas of criminological knowledge (development and causation, criminal careers and justice, prevention, intervention and treatment, and public policy).

Rwanda's Gacaca Courts

Paul Christoph Bornkamm — 2012-05-24

Author:: Paul Christoph Bornkamm
ISBN:: 9780199694471
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199694471.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

Rwanda's Gacaca courts provide an innovative response to the genocide of 1994. Incorporating elements of both African dispute resolution and of Western-style criminal courts, Gacaca courts are in line with recent trends to revive traditional grassroots mechanisms as a way of addressing a violent past. Having been devised as a holistic approach to prosecution and punishment as well as to healing and repairing, they also reflect the increasing importance of victim participation in international criminal justice. This book critically examines the Gacaca courts' achievements as a mechanism of criminal justice and as a tool for healing, repairing, and reconciling the shattered communities. Having prosecuted over one million people suspected of crimes during the 1994 genocide, the courts have been both praised for their efficiency and condemned for their lack of due process. Drawing upon extensive observations of trial proceedings, this book provides a detailed analysis of the Gacaca legislation and its practical implementation. It discusses the Gacaca courts within the framework of transitional and international criminal justice and argues that, despite the trend towards local, tailor-made solutions to the challenges of political transition, there is a common set of principles to be respected in addressing the past. Evaluating the Gacaca courts against the backdrop of existing or emerging principles, such as the duties to investigate and prosecute, and the right to the truth, the book provides a sophisticated critique of Rwanda's reconciliation policy. In doing so, it contributes to the development and the clarification of these principles. It concludes that Gacaca courts have achieved a great deal in stimulating a basic discourse on the genocide, but they have also contributed to assigning collective responsibility and may thus end up deepening the divides within Rwandan society.

Manifest Madness

Arlie Loughnan — 2012-05-24

Author:: Arlie Loughnan
ISBN:: 9780199698592
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698592.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

Whether it is a question of the age below which a child cannot be held liable for their actions, or the attribution of responsibility to defendants with mental illnesses, mental incapacity is a central concern for legal actors, policy makers, and legislators when it comes to crime and justice. Understanding the terrain of mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices including those of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understanding of mental order and incapacity. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on criminal responsibility from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of mental incapacity defences, analysing their development through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries between normality and abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that ‘manifest madness’ — the distinct character of mental incapacity revealed by this interdisciplinary approach — has a broad significance for understanding the criminal law as a whole.

The Machinery of Criminal Justice

Stephanos Bibas — 2012-05-24

Author:: Stephanos Bibas
ISBN:: 9780195374681
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374681.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

Two centuries ago the criminal justice system was primarily run by laymen. In court, victims and defendants interacted face to face while lay jurors from the community sat in judgment. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, denounced guilty defendants, and reconciled and healed wounded relationships. But over the last two centuries, lawyers have taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for voice of the jury. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, interests, values, and powers. This book explores these trends and considers how criminal justice could better accommodate lay participation, values, and relationships.

Individual Criminal Responsibility in International Law

Elies van Sliedregt — 2012-05-24

Author:: Elies van Sliedregt
ISBN:: 9780199560363
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560363.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book examines the concept of individual criminal responsibility for serious violations of international law, i.e., aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Such crimes are rarely committed by single individuals. Rather, international crimes generally connote a plurality of offenders, particularly in the execution of the crimes, which are often orchestrated and masterminded by individuals behind the scene of the crimes who can be termed ‘intellectual perpetrators’. For a determination of individual guilt and responsibility, a fair assessment of the mutual relationships between those persons is indispensable. By setting out how to understand and apply concepts such as joint criminal enterprise, superior responsibility, duress, and the defence of superior orders, this work provides a framework for that assessment. It does so by bringing to light the roots of these concepts, which lie not merely in earlier phases of development of international criminal law but also in domestic law and legal doctrine. The book also critically reflects on how criminal responsibility has been developed in the case law of international criminal tribunals and courts. It thus illuminates and analyses the rules on individual responsibility in international law.

Crime and Punishment

Hyman Gross — 2012-05-24

Author:: Hyman Gross
ISBN:: 9780199644711
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644711.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

It is generally assumed that we are justified in punishing criminals because they have committed a morally wrongful act. Determining when criminal liability should be imposed calls for a moral assessment of the conduct in question, with criminal liability tracking as closely as possible the contours of morality. Versions of this view are frequently argued for in philosophical accounts of crime and punishment, and seem to be presumed by lawyers and policy makers working in the criminal justice system. Challenging such assumptions, this book considers the dominant justifications of punishment and subjects them to a piercing moral critique. It argues that none overcome the objection that people who are convicted of a serious crime and sent to prison have their basic human rights violated. The institution of criminal punishment is shown to be a regrettable necessity not deserving of the moral enthusiasm it enjoys among many politicians and the popular press. From a moral point of view, punishment is entitled at best to grudging toleration. In the course of developing the argument, the book introduces the principal issues of criminal law theory with the aim of presenting a morally enlightened perspective on crimes and why we punish them. Enforcement of the law by police, prosecutors, and courts is a matter of concern for political morality, and the principal practices of the criminal justice system are subjected to moral scrutiny. The book offers a provocative introduction to thinking about the philosophy of crime and punishment.

Confessions of Guilt

George C. Thomas III and Richard A. Leo — 2012-05-24

Author:: George C. Thomas III, Richard A. Leo
ISBN:: 9780195338935
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338935.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

The extreme interrogation tactics permitted after the 9/11 attacks illustrate that the level of fear in society can influence interrogation law. Confessions of Guilt tells the story of how, over the centuries, law moved from indifference about extreme pressure to concern over the slightest pressure, and back again. Five movements from one extreme to the other can be detected in Anglo-American law. The book argues that the movements are largely caused by the level of threat felt in society. One of the movements occurred when American cities became dense, dangerous places in the late nineteenth century and judges became more accepting of high-pressure police interrogation. The trend would culminate in the “third degree,” the use of extreme police coercion to obtain confessions. Not openly tolerated by courts, the third degree remained in the shadows and would largely disappear by the 1940s. A quarter-century later, the Supreme Court turned to Miranda rules that required warnings of the right to remain silent and the right to counsel. As crime rates once again skyrocketed, the courts continued to permit high-pressure tactics despite Miranda. Confessions law has thus lurched back toward a crime-control focus. The interrogation of terrorism suspects is only the most visible manifestation of that change.

When Children Kill Children

David A. Green — 2012-03-22

Author:: David A. Green
ISBN:: 9780199230969
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230969.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This title examines the role of political culture and penal populism in the response to the emotive subject of child-on-child homicide. The book explores the reasons underlying the vastly differing responses of the English and Norwegian criminal justice systems to the cases of James Bulger and Silje Redergård respectively. Whereas James Bulger's killers were subject to extreme press and public hostility, and held in secure detention for nine months before being tried in an adversarial court, and serving eight years in custody, Redergård's killers were shielded from public antagonism and carefully reintegrated into the local community. This book argues that the English adversarial political culture creates far more incentives to politicize high-profile crimes than the Norwegian consensus political culture. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research, the book suggests that the tendency for politicians to justify punitive responses to crime by invoking harsh political attitudes is based upon a flawed understanding of public opinion. In a compelling study, the book proposes that a more deliberative response to crime is possible by making English culture less adversarial and by making informed public judgment more assessable.

Understanding Miscarriages of Justice

Richard Nobles and David Schiff — 2012-03-22

Author:: Richard Nobles, David Schiff
ISBN:: 9780198298939
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198298939.001.0001
Published in print:: 2000
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book explores a paradox. In a society in which justice is uncertain and contested, how can we talk meaningfully about miscarriage of justice? The book examines the structural conditions that inevitably produce high-profile miscarriages of justice. The thesis of the book is that there is a tension between the rhetoric of justice as understood outside of law, particularly in the media, and legal practice. Despite evidence that miscarriages of justice must be a normal and expected consequence of imperfect arrangements for investigations, prosecutions, and trials, they are ordinarily understood as exceptional and unacceptable events. Periodically, however, miscarriages are seen not as exceptional, but widespread and normal. At such moments, the legitimacy of the criminal justice process is called into question in the media. These moments are constructed in the media as a crisis of public confidence in criminal justice. With the mass media's vivid interest in crime and punishment and their relentless reconstruction of relevant facts, the courts fact-finding monopoly is fundamentally contested. While this happens in all phases of a criminal process, the contest becomes particularly dramatic when after a criminal conviction the mass media continue their investigation and discover, according to their criteria of truth, a miscarriage of justice. But there is no set of common criteria that would allow for the design of rational procedures to end the contest. There is no forum, no procedure, and no set of criteria that would make possible a common search for truth.

Structure and Function in Criminal Law

Paul H. Robinson — 2012-03-22

Author:: Paul H. Robinson
ISBN:: 9780198258865
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198258865.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book provides a new critique of the often neglected problem of classification within the criminal law. The author presents a discussion of the present conceptual framework of the law, and offers explanations of how and why formal structures do not match the operation of law in practice. In this scholarly exposition of applied criminal theory, the author argues that the current operational structure of the criminal law fails to take account of its different functions. He goes on to suggest new sample codes of criminal conduct and criminal adjudication which mark a real departure from the pragmatic approach which presently dominates code-making. This rounded exploration of the structure of systems of criminal law is an important work for law teachers and policy makers world-wide.

Standing Accused

Mike McConville, Jacqueline Hodgson, Lee Bridges, and Anita Pavlovic — 2012-03-22

Author:: Mike McConville, Jacqueline Hodgson, Lee Bridges, Anita Pavlovic
ISBN:: 9780198258681
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198258681.001.0001
Published in print:: 1994
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Criminal cases are commonly seen as a fight between adversaries of equal strength: the intrusive power of the State versus skilled defence lawyers advocating their clients' cause. The reality, according to this major new study, is rather different. The provision of defence counsel is often rudimentary and unsatisfactory. Based on one of the largest studies of legal professional practice ever undertaken, involving nearly fifty solicitors' firms, this book offers a critical examination of the practices and organisation of defence lawyers in Britain. The authors show how defence lawyers discharge their obligations to clients from the moment of initial contact through to the routine preparation and representation of defendants in both magistrates' and Crown Courts. For the first time, this study reveals the role of paralegals and unqualified staff in providing defence assistance, and highlights how their inexperience and assumption of the client's guilt can critically undermine defendants' rights. The deficiencies highlighted by their research lead the authors to question the effectiveness of recent liberal and managerial reforms, with their excessive reliance on market-led considerations. They propose a cultural transformation in criminal defence work, a reassertion of the defendants' rights within an adversarial system, and offer constructive suggestions for improving defence services.

Social Order and the Fear of Crime in Contemporary Times

Stephen D. Farrall, Jonathan Jackson, and Emily Gray — 2012-03-22

Author:: Stephen D. Farrall, Jonathan Jackson, Emily Gray
ISBN:: 9780199540815
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199540815.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

The fear of crime has been recognized as an important social problem in its own right, with a significant number of citizens in many countries concerned about crime. In this book, the chapters critically review the main findings from over thirty-five years of research into attitudes to crime, highlighting groups who are most fearful of crime and exploring the theories used to account for that fear. Using this research, the text moves on to propose a new model for the fear of crime, arguing that such methods, which involve intensity questions (such as ‘how worried are you about x …’), may actually conflate an ‘expressive’ or ‘attitudinal’ component of the fear of crime with an experiential component and therefore fail to provide a comprehensive insight into how crime is perceived. The chapters use existing quantitative data from the British Crime Survey to pose theoretically informed questions to help identify those who only ‘expressively’ fear crime, separating them from those who have the actual experience of worrying about crime. The book explores the extent to which each group has different social attitudes and backgrounds, and whether there is more than one social/cultural form of the fear of crime.

Silence, Confessions and Improperly Obtained Evidence

Peter Mirfield — 2012-03-22

Author:: Peter Mirfield
ISBN:: 9780198262695
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198262695.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book examines in some detail the law relating to confessions, unlawful evidence, and the ‘right to silence’ in the police station. It also looks at the principles which lie behind this branch of the law. As well as its close examination of the English position, the book also looks at alternative approaches taken by legal systems in Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Rethinking Imprisonment

Richard L. Lippke — 2012-03-22

Author:: Richard L. Lippke
ISBN:: 9780199209125
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199209125.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Drawing on philosophical arguments, criminological evidence, and the legal literature on prisoners' rights, this book defends a normative theory of imprisonment. Such a theory provides an account of the justified conditions of prison confinement — the restrictions and deprivations that may be legitimately imposed on serious offenders in the name of punishment. The theory of legal punishment upon which this account builds combines retributive and crime reduction elements, with the former accorded priority on both moral and epistemic grounds. Contrary to its formidable reputation, retributivism is shown to place important and substantial limits on the character of imprisonment, its appropriate use, and duration. Much of the contemporary use of imprisonment as a legal sanction is arguably unjustified on all three counts. The book urges the adoption of prison conditions at or near the ‘minimum conditions of confinement’ which severely curtail the freedom of movement, freedom of association, and privacy of prisoners, yet are still consistent with ensuring the basic physical and psychological welfare of prisoners, and provide them with access to paid labour, visitation, entertainment, recreation, and retained civic and political rights. This book argues firstly that the punishment of serious offenders generally requires no more than the imposition of ‘minimum conditions of confinement’ and secondly that moral constraints on punishment derived from retributivism in conjunction with the available evidence about the prison regimes most likely to reduce crime point towards more humane and less restrictive prisons.

Rethinking English Homicide Law

Andrew Ashworth and Barry Mitchell — 2012-03-22

Author:: AndrewAshworthUniversity of OxfordBarryMitchellUniversity of Coventry
ISBN:: 9780198299158
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299158.001.0001
Published in print:: 2000
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

The law of homicide is probably the most high-profile area of the criminal law, and yet in recent years it has been relatively neglected by law-reform agencies. This book brings together six English criminal lawyers to discuss the future shape of the English law of homicide, and deals with such important topics as the definition of murder, the relevance of mental-abnormality provocation, unintentional killings, defences, and sentencing. It also considers broad policy choices and matters of detail in their contemporary social and legal contexts, and highlights the difficult issues that need to be tackled if we are to have an up-to-date law for murder and manslaughter.

Reconstructing a Women's Prison

Paul Rock — 2012-03-22

Author:: Paul Rock
ISBN:: 9780198260950
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198260950.001.0001
Published in print:: 1996
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

The rebuilding of Holloway prison announced in 1968 was intended to be of enormous significance for the treatment and therapeutic rehabilitation of female inmates. Reconstruction began in 1970 but the new prison was not completed until 1985. By this time penal ideologies had changed, and the Prison Department had revised its conception of female criminality. Thus, what was intended to be a new therapeutic prison became a place of conventional discipline and containment. These developments created serious problems within the prison and led to Holloway being identified as a public and political scandal. Using original documents and extensive interviews, this book traces the genesis and consequences of the decision to rebuild England's major prison for women, and shows how the experience at Holloway reflects shifting attitudes towards female criminals, and the relationships among penal ideology, architecture, control, and behaviour in a penal institution.

Punishment and Democracy

Franklin E. Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, and Sam Kamin — 2012-03-22

Author:: Franklin E. Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, Sam Kamin
ISBN:: 9780195171174
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171174.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

“Getting tough on crime” has been one of the favorite rallying cries of American politicians in the last two decades, and “getting tough” on repeat offenders has been particularly popular. “Three strikes and you're out” laws, which effectively impose a twenty-five-years-to-life sentence at the moment of a third felony conviction, have been passed in twenty-six states. California's version of the “three strikes” law, enacted in 1994, was broader and more severe than measures considered or passed in any other state. This book provides an examination of the actual impact this law has had. This book looks at the origins of the law in California, compares it to other crackdown laws, and analyzes the data collected on crime rates in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in the year before and the two years after the law went into effect. Chapters show that the “three strikes” law was a significant development in criminal justice policy making, not only at the state level, but also at the national level. It concludes with an examination of the trend toward populist initiatives driving penal policy.

Punishing Persistent Offenders

Julian V. Roberts — 2012-03-22

Author:: Julian V. Roberts
ISBN:: 9780199283897
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283897.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Despite very diverse approaches towards punishing crime, all Western jurisdictions punish repeat offenders more harshly (a practice known as the recidivist sentencing premium). For many repeat offenders, their previous convictions have more impact on the penalty they receive than the seriousness of their current crime. Why do we punish recidivists more harshly? Some sentencing theorists argue that offenders should be punished only for the crimes they commit — not for the crimes committed and paid for in the past. From this perspective, punishing repeat offenders more severely amounts to double punishment. Having been punished once for an offence, the recidivist will pay for the crime again every time he re-offends. Is this fair? This volume explores the nature and consequences of the recidivist sentencing premium on both the theoretical and empirical levels. It begins by exploring the justifications for treating repeat offenders more harshly, and then provides examples of the practice from a number of jurisdictions including England and Wales, Canada, and the United States. Particular attention is paid to the views of two important groups: convicted offenders and the general public. If offenders believe that the recidivist sentencing premium is unjustified, they are less likely to accept the legitimacy of the justice system. As for members of the public, it is important to know whether this key element of the sentencing process is consistent with community views.

Provocation and Responsibility

Jeremy Horder — 2012-03-22

Author:: Jeremy Horder
ISBN:: 9780198256960
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198256960.001.0001
Published in print:: 1992
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book draws on historical and philosophical sources not normally linked in analysis of the criminal law, to provide a detailed study of the effect of provocation on culpability in morality and law. It traces the fascinating history and colourful development of the legal doctrine of provocation, right up to present-day controversies over the scope of the doctrine’s application in murder cases. These developments are illuminated throughout by setting them in the context of the changing moral and philosophical understanding of anger, its effect on responsibility, and the role it plays in the human character.

Private Security and Public Policing

Trevor Jones and Tim Newburn — 2012-03-22

Author:: Trevor Jones, Tim Newburn
ISBN:: 9780198265696
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198265696.001.0001
Published in print:: 1993
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

In this first major empirical study of its kind, the book examines the growth of ‘private’ policing and its relationship with, and implications for, the public police service. Beginning with a critique of the sociology of policing, it then provides a detailed analysis of the concepts of public and private, and examines the boundaries between different forms of policing. Using data from the first ever survey of the private security sector in Britain, the book provides estimates of the numbers of employees and firms in the industry; the range of services and products offered; and the attitudes of those at senior levels in private security organisations. Competing theoretical explanations for the growth of private policing are then considered. The book then examines policing at the local level. Using a case study of the London Borough of Wandsworth, it analyses the range of individuals and organisations involved in policing on the ground. It describes and explores the activities of the full range of ‘policing’ bodies, including the public police force, investigatory and regulatory agencies attached to national and local government, and private security organisations. Using this analysis, the book offers a thorough reconceptualisation of what is meant by ‘policing’ in the late modern era, and considers the implications of this for the public police service and for the future of policing generally.

Prisons and the Problem of Order

Richard Sparks, Anthony Bottoms, and Will Hay — 2012-03-22

Author:: Richard Sparks, Anthony Bottoms, Will Hay
ISBN:: 9780198258186
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198258186.001.0001
Published in print:: 1996
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book presents a substantial revolution on the character of confined social life. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in two contrasting English maximum security prisons, the authors systematically compare their institutional order, including the differing control strategies deployed in each, as seen by both custodians and captives, controllers and controlled. The authors discuss the insinuations of their research for the tradition of sociological concern within the ‘prison community.’ They re-examine the resources of that rich but latterly somewhat dormant field in the light of some of the main currents in contemporary social theory, and thereby provide a new perspective on the ‘problem of order’ in maximum custody. This book will have significant policy implications, and it will be required reading for scholars and students in criminology and criminal justice, as well as for administrators and reformers in penal systems.

The Prisoner Society

Ben Crewe — 2012-03-22

Author:: Ben Crewe
ISBN:: 9780199577965
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577965.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

While the use of imprisonment continues to rise in developed nations, we have little sociological knowledge of the prison's inner world. Based on extensive fieldwork in a medium-security prison in the UK, HMP Wellingborough, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the prison's social anatomy. It explains how power is exercised by the institution, individualizing the prisoner community and demanding particular forms of compliance and engagement. Drawing on prisoners' life stories, it shows how different prisoners experience and respond to the new range of penal practices and frustrations. It then explains how the prisoner society — its norms, hierarchy, and social relationships — is shaped both by these conditions of confinement and by the different backgrounds, values, and identities that prisoners bring into the prison environment.

The Politics of Crime Control

Tim Newburn and Paul Rock — 2012-03-22

Author:: TimNewburnProfessor of Criminology and Social Policy and Director, Mannheim Centre for Criminology, LSEPaulRockProfessor of Social Institutions, London School of Economics
ISBN:: 9780199565955
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565955.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book brings together ten leading British criminologists to explore the contemporary politics of crime and its control. The volume is produced in honour of Britain's most important criminological scholar — David Downes of the London School of Economics. The chapters are grouped around the three major themes that run through David Downes' work — sociological theory, crime and deviance; comparative penal policy; and the politics of crime. The third theme also provides the overarching unifying thread for the volume. The contributions are broad ranging and cover such subjects as criminological theory and the new East End of London, the practice of comparative criminology including an analysis of variations in penal cultures within the United States, restorative justice in Colombia, New Labour's politics and policy in relation to dangerous personality-disordered offenders, the legal construction of torture, and the future for a social democratic criminology.

Policing World Society

Mathieu Deflem — 2012-03-22

Author:: Mathieu Deflem
ISBN:: 9780199274710
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199274710.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book offers a sociological analysis of the history of international police cooperation in the period from the middle of the 19th century until the end of World War II. It is an exploration of international cooperation strategies involving police institutions from the United States and Germany as well as other European countries. The study provides an empirical account of many dimensions in the history of international policing, including the role of police in the 19th-century national independence movement; the evolution from simple cooperation towards international criminal enforcement duties; international policing aspects of the outbreak of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution; the early history of international police organizations, including Interpol; the international implications of the Nazification of the German police; and the rise on the international scene of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. To account for these historical transformations, the book develops a theoretical model of bureaucratization based on the sociology of Max Weber and theories of globalization. It is argued that international police cooperation is enabled through a historical process of police agencies gradually claiming and gaining a position of relative independence from the governments of their respective states. Furthermore, the book shows that international police cooperation relies on expert systems of knowledge on international crime, which police institutions across nations develop and share. Paradoxically, in spite of this spirit of cooperation, national concerns of participating forces remain paramount.

Policing the Caribbean

Ben Bowling — 2012-03-22

Author:: Ben Bowling
ISBN:: 9780199577699
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577699.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book explores the emergence of law enforcement and security practices that extend beyond the boundaries of the nation state. Perceptions of public safety and national sovereignty are shifting in the face of domestic, regional, and global insecurity, and with the emergence of transnational policing practices responding to drug trafficking and organised crime. The book examines how security threats are prioritised and the strategies that are put in place to respond to them, based on a detailed empirical case study of police and security sector organisations in the Caribbean. Transnational policing, one of the most significant recent developments in the security field, has brought about a number of changes in the organisation of criminal law enforcement in the Caribbean and other parts of the world. Drawing on interviews with chief police officers, customs, coastguard, immigration, security, military, and government officials, this book examines these changes, providing a unique insight into the work of overseas liaison officers from the UK and the USA, and their collaboration with local police and security agencies. This book assesses the extent to which a restructured transnational security infrastructure has enhanced the safety and wellbeing of the Caribbean islands, and other countries on the shores of the north Atlantic, and asks how we can ensure that policing beyond boundaries is accountable and good enough to make the world a safer place.

Policing and the Condition of England

Ian Loader and Aogán Mulcahy — 2012-03-22

Author:: Ian Loader, Aogán Mulcahy
ISBN:: 9780198299066
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299066.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book seeks to address the pathologies and possibilities that attend the cultural connection between police, state, and nation. The goal is to assess the cultural and political significance of English policing, and its place within contemporary English social relations and public life. Drawing upon a two-year study of a range of police documentary materials, and biographical and oral history interviews with various strata of the populace, senior and rank-and-file police officers, and politicians and civil servants, it constructs a cultural sociology of the meanings attached to the idea of policing within English memory and sensibility — one oriented to the ways in which policing has intersected with forms of social and political change in English society since 1945. The book is organized into four parts. Part I offers an exposition and critique and what has become an influential sociological account of citizens' apparent loss of faith in the English police since 1945, referred to as the ‘desacralization thesis’. Part II is concerned principally with the narratives that constitute lay dispositions towards English policing. Part III focuses on official (i.e., police and governmental) narratives. Part IV draws the threads of the enquiry together and offers an assessment of the current condition of English policing culture.

Police Culture in a Changing World

Bethan Loftus — 2012-03-22

Author:: Bethan Loftus
ISBN:: 9780199560905
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560905.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This title offers an ethnographical investigation of contemporary police culture based on fieldwork across a range of ranks and units in the UK police force. By drawing on over 600 hours of direct observation of operational policing in urban and rural areas and interviews with over 60 officers, the author assesses what impact three decades of social, economic, and political change have had on police culture. The book offers understandings of the policing of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, and the ways in which reform initiatives are accommodated and resisted within the police force. The author also explores the attempts of one force to effect cultural change both to improve the working conditions of staff and to deliver a more effective and equitable service to all groups in society. Beginning with a review of the literature on police culture from 30 years ago, the author goes on to outline the new social, economic, and political field of contemporary British policing. Taking this as a starting point, the remaining chapters present the main findings of the empirical research in what is a comprehensive analysis of present-day policing culture.

Paramilitary Imprisonment in Northern Ireland

Kieran McEvoy — 2012-03-22

Author:: Kieran McEvoy
ISBN:: 9780198299073
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299073.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book offers a unique analysis of paramilitary imprisonment in Northern Ireland. The central focus of the book is the struggle between inmates and the state concerning the prisoners' assertion of their status as political prisoners. Drawing upon interviews with former Republican and Loyalist prisoners as well as prison managers and staff, this book locates that experience within the broader theoretical literature on imprisonment. Four forms of prison resistance by which prisoners asserted their political status are examined. Dirty protest and hunger strike are characterised as resistance through self-sacrifice. Violence, destruction, and intimidation are examined as prison resistance becoming an extension of armed struggle. Escape is analysed as a form of resistance through ridicule. And finally law is considered as instrumental resistance and a dialogical process with a range of audiences. The book then considers a range of prison management adopted by the prison authorities. ‘Reactive Containment’ is described as a military-led model of management which incapacitated the terrorist ‘enemy’ but acknowledged the political character of the inmates. ‘Criminalisation’ is viewed as a strategy designed to deny any practical or symbolic acceptance of the political motivation of prisoners. ‘Managerialism’, it is argued, encompasses a series of scientific discourses to rationalise conflicting interactions with prisoners, from pragmatic accommodations to a dogged determination to prevent further recognition of de facto political status. The book concludes with an analysis of the early release of paramilitary prisoners and the conflict resolution process and some reflections on political prisons as spaces both during and after a political conflict.

Open Justice: A Critique of the Public Trial

Joseph Jaconelli — 2012-03-22

Author:: Joseph Jaconelli
ISBN:: 9780198252580
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198252580.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

It has long been a fundamental norm of civilized legal systems that the administration of justice is conducted in full view of the public. This is regarded as particularly important in criminal cases, where the accused is traditionally viewed as possessing the right to a public trial. The rise of the modern media, especially television, has created the possibility of a global audience for high-profile cases. Increasingly, however, it is seen that the open conduct of legal proceedings is prejudicial to important values such as the privacy of parties, rehabilitative considerations, national security, commercial secrecy, and the need to safeguard witnesses and jurors from intimidation. This book explores these issues and offers a critical examination, in the context of English Law, of the values served by open justice and the tensions that exist between it and other important interests.

Making Sense of Penal Change

Tom Daems — 2012-03-22

Author:: Tom Daems
ISBN:: 9780199559787
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559787.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book reviews the burgeoning literature on contemporary punishment and penal change, concentrating on the work of David Garland, John Pratt, Hans Boutellier and Loïc Wacquant. The author argues that academics do not think and write in a vacuum, they carry a past with them and are influenced by new insights and theories, and constantly need to reposition themselves within their own field and their political environment. This book, then, is as much about the selected authors as the stories they bring. It includes four large chapters devoted to the work of each author, offering an exposé of their work framed within the context of their lives. It offers a discussion of their central ideas and their distinctive approach towards questions of penal change and an analysis of the relationship between their roles as scholars in an academic environment and citizens in a political community. The scholar-oriented approach allows the author to deal with questions related to criminology's public persuasiveness—a timely analysis in view of recent calls for criminologists and other social scientists to enter public debate more directly.

The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to Community and Partnerships

Adam Crawford — 2012-03-22

Author:: Adam Crawford
ISBN:: 9780198298458
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198298458.001.0001
Published in print:: 1999
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

The book considers recent trends in the local governance of crime. It examines the growing appeal to ‘community’ and ‘partnerships’ in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual communities and partnerships in criminal justice practices. The book makes sense of ongoing transformations in the relations between the state, market, and civil society in the governance of crime and personal safety. It draws upon the findings of two empirical research projects, conducted by the author, in the fields of community-based crime prevention and local victim-offender and community mediation. The overall aim of the book is to answer, both theoretically and empirically, a number of interrelated questions, namely: How do we make sense of appeals to ‘community’ and ‘partnerships’ in criminal justice policy? What are the implications of the actual involvement of ‘communities’ and the establishment of inter-organizational ‘partnerships’ in crime control initiatives? Is crime control an appropriate vehicle around which to (re)organize communities? Finally, if so, what sort of communities are we generating through such a focus?

Life after Life Imprisonment

Catherine Appleton — 2012-03-22

Author:: Catherine Appleton
ISBN:: 9780199582716
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582716.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book explores one of the most contentious and sensitive topics in criminal justice: the release and resettlement of life-sentenced offenders. The book provides an analysis of the post-prison experiences of 138 discretionary life-sentenced offenders, all of whom were released from prison across England and Wales during the mid-1990s. Using accessible data the book examines key legal developments within the criminal justice system for discretionary life-sentenced offenders, explores the frontline experiences of criminal justice practitioners charged with the responsibility of supervising life-sentenced offenders, and analyses the ‘stories’ or life narratives of a group of individuals who have committed some of the most serious crimes. The book examines the process of recall for life-sentenced prisoners and explores key factors associated with failure in the community. The book offers an insight into how societies respond to serious crimes and identifies important elements of successful reintegration for released life-sentenced offenders.

Lawyers, Legislators and Theorists

K. J. M. Smith — 2012-03-22

Author:: K. J. M. Smith
ISBN:: 9780198257233
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198257233.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book describes the development of substantive criminal law during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author examines the forces which shaped criminal jurisprudence throughout the course of this period, paying particular attention to the activities of legislators and reformers, to parallel developments in the study of punishment and human psychology, to general social and political changes, and to the growth of an organized police force and its reliance upon formal rules of procedure and evidence.

Juvenile Justice in the Making

David S. Tanenhaus and Bernardine Dohrn — 2012-03-22

Author:: David S. Tanenhaus, Bernardine Dohrn
ISBN:: 9780195306507
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306507.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book explores the fundamental and enduring question of how the law should treat the young. Sifting through almost 3,000 Chicago case files from the early 20th century, this book reveals how children's advocates slowly built up a separate system for juveniles, all the while fighting political and legal battles to legitimate this controversial institution. Harkening back to a more hopeful and nuanced age, this book provides a historical framework for thinking about youth policy.

Investigating Murder

Martin Innes — 2012-03-22

Author:: Martin Innes
ISBN:: 9780199259427
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259427.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book provides a unique insight into how police detectives investigate and solve murders. Based upon fieldwork observation of murder squads at work, interviews with detectives and detailed analysis of police case files, it provides an original account of the practices and processes involved in the investigation of homicides, as well as some of the problems that are often encountered in the conduct of this work. Drawing upon detailed empirical data collected, the book develops a conceptual framework for understanding the methods that detectives seek to utilise in order to identify suspects and construct a case against them. Situating such work in its social and legal context this major study shows how interviews, forensic evidence, and other investigative techniques are used by detectives to manufacture a narrative of the crime that sets out how the incident took place, and who did what to whom. In so doing, the book does much to further our understandings of detective work, how detectives understand their role, the problems they encounter and the solutions they manufacture to solve these problems.

Harsh Justice

James Q. Whitman — 2012-03-22

Author:: James Q. Whitman
ISBN:: 9780195182606
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182606.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading—more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? This book takes a comparative legal history perspective and argues that the answer lies in America's triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.

Harm and Culpability

A. P. Simester and A. T. H. Smith — 2012-03-22

Author:: A. P.SimesterCentre for Penal Theory and Penal Ethics, Cambridge UniversityA. T. H.SmithCambridge University
ISBN:: 9780198260578
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198260578.001.0001
Published in print:: 1996
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book draws together original and significant chapters from a number of leading authorities which identify areas of the modern criminal law where there are significant conceptual difficulties. The project developed from a series of seminars in Cambridge University, in which leading Anglo-American philosophers, criminal lawyers, and legal theorists explored subjects such as attempts, intention, justification, excuses, coercion, complicity, drug-dealing, and criminal harm. The topics covered in this collection were chosen for their topicality as well as their theoretical and practical significance.

Gun Violence

Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig — 2012-03-22

Author:: Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig
ISBN:: 9780195153842
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195153842.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Until now researchers have assessed the burden imposed by gunshot injuries and deaths in terms of medical costs and lost productivity. Here, the chapters widen the lens, developing a framework to calculate the full costs borne by Americans in a society where both gun violence and its ever-present threat mandate responses that touch every aspect of our lives. All Americans share the costs of gun violence. Whether waiting in line to pass through airport security or paying taxes for the protection of public officials; whether buying a transparent book-bag for their children to meet their school's post-Columbine regulations or subsidizing an urban trauma center, the steps taken are many and the expenditures enormous. The chapters reveal that investments in prevention, avoidance, and harm reduction, both public and private, constitute a far greater share of the gun-violence burden than previously recognized. They also employ extensive survey data to measure the subjective costs of living in a society where there is risk of being shot or losing a loved one or neighbor to gunfire. At the same time, they demonstrate that the problem of gun violence is not intractable. The review of the available evidence suggests that there are both additional gun regulations and targeted law enforcement measures that will help. This book moves the debate over gun violence past symbolic politics to a direct engagement with the costs and benefits of policies that hold promise for reducing gun violence and may even pay for themselves.

The Eternal Recurrence of Crime and Control: Essays in Honour of Paul Rock

David Downes, Dick Hobbs, and Tim Newburn — 2012-03-22

Author:: DavidDownesProfessor Emeritus of Social Policy and a former Director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of EconomicsDickHobbsProfessor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Tim Newburn
ISBN:: 9780199580231
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580231.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book features contributions from criminologists from the UK, the US, and Australia, brought together to honour the work of Paul Rock, former Professor of Social Institutions at the London School of Economics. It offers an exploration of the theories which underpin much of current criminological thinking. The resulting thirteen chapters all examine and build upon the central themes associated with Paul Rock's work: social and criminological theory, policy development and policy-making, and victims and victimology. Together, the chapters draw on some of his landmark publications for inspiration and discuss the key findings presented over his fifty-year career. These include his contribution to the theoretical development of symbolic interactionism and approaches to sociological theory and practice, as well as an analysis of the concept of criminal justice as a social institution and the resurgence of treatment programmes for women offenders. Also of note is a critical study of the Macpherson enquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, an ethnographic exploration of the repercussions of incarceration on prisoners' families and inmates, and two chapters drawing on Paul Rock's work with victims and secondary victims of homicide.

Desisting from Crime

Michael E. Ezell and Lawrence E. Cohen — 2012-03-22

Author:: Michael E. Ezell, Lawrence E. Cohen
ISBN:: 9780199273812
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273812.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This groundbreaking study examines patterns of offending among persistent juvenile offenders. The book addresses questions that have been the focus of criminological debate over the last two decades. Are there are multiple groups of offenders in the population with distinct age-crime patterns? Are between-person differences in criminal offending patterns stable throughout the offender's life? Is there a relationship between offending at one time and at a subsequent time of life, after time-stable differences in criminal propensity are controlled? This book addresses these issues by examining three large, separately drawn samples of serious youthful offenders from California. Sophisticated statistical models were used to test eight empirical hypotheses drawn from three major theories of crime: population heterogeneity, state dependence, and dual taxonomy. Each of these three perspectives offers different predictions about the relationship between age and crime, and the possibility of crime desistance over the life of serious chronic offenders. Despite the serious chronic criminality among the sample offenders, by the time they reached their mid- to late twenties and continuing into their thirties, each of the six latent classes of offender identified by the study had begun to demonstrate a declining number of arrests. This finding has profound implications for penal policies that impose life sentences on multiple offenders, such as the Californian ‘three strikes and you're out’ policy, which incarcerates inmates for 25 years to life with their ‘third strike’ conviction, at precisely the point when they have begun to grow out of serious crime.

The Death Penalty

Roger Hood CBE QC (Hon) DCL FBA and Carolyn Hoyle — 2012-03-22

Author:: Roger Hood CBE QC (Hon) DCL FBA, Carolyn Hoyle
ISBN:: 9780199228478
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Human Rights Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199228478.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

The 4th edition of this study of the death penalty brings up-to-date developments in the movement to abolish the practice worldwide. It draws on personal experience as consultant to the United Nations for the UN Secretary General's five-yearly surveys of capital punishment and on the latest information from non-governmental organisations and the academic literature. Not only have many more countries abolished capital punishment but, even amongst those that retain it, the majority have been carrying out fewer executions. Legal challenges to mandatory capital punishment have been successful, as has the pressure to abolish the death penalty for those who commit a capital crime when under the age of 18. This edition has more to say about the prospects that China will restrict and control the number of executions ‘on the road to abolition’. Yet, despite such advances, this book reveals many human rights abuses where the death penalty still exists. In some countries a wide range of crimes are still subject to capital punishment, and the authorities too often fail to meet the safeguards embodied in international human rights treaties to safeguard those facing the death penalty. There is evidence of police abuse, unfair trials, lack of access to competent defence counsel, excessive periods of time spent in horrible conditions on ‘death row’, and public, painful forms of execution. The book engages with the latest debates on the realities of capital punishment, especially its justification as a uniquely effective deterrent.

The Culture of Control

David Garland — 2012-03-22

Author:: David Garland
ISBN:: 9780199258024
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Philosophy of Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199258024.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book charts the changes in crime control and criminal justice that have occurred in Britain and America. It then explains these transformations by showing how the social organization of late modern society has prompted a series of political and cultural adaptations that alter how governments and citizens think and act in relation to crime. The book presents an analysis of contemporary crime control, revealing its underlying logics and rationalities, and identifying the social relations and cultural sensibilities that have produced this new culture of control. In developing a ‘history of the present’ in the field of crime control, the book presents an intertwined history of the welfare state and the criminal justice state, a theory of social and penal change, and an account of how social order is constructed. Drawing on research in the UK and the USA, it shows how the social, economic, and cultural forces of the late 20th century have reshaped criminological thought, public policy, and the cultural meaning of crime and criminals. The shifting policies of crime and punishment, welfare and security — and the changing class, race and gender relations that underpin them — are viewed as aspects of the problem of governing late modern society and creating social order in a rapidly changing world.

Criminal Lives

Barry S. Godfrey, David J. Cox, and Stephen Farrall — 2012-03-22

Author:: Barry S. Godfrey, David J. Cox, Stephen Farrall
ISBN:: 9780199217205
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217205.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book uses historical data to directly address modern criminological debates. There is currently a huge growth of interest in histories of crime, and intellectual conversations and connections between historians and criminologists are becoming much more frequent. However, published work which uses historical data to this extent is rare. This book’s aim is to draw a wide audience from the worlds of criminology, history, and social policy and engage in a genuinely interdisciplinary debate. This book addresses a number of important questions about offenders’ persistence in, or desistance from, crime and questions the current theoretical frameworks that are given to explain why some people stop, or slow down, their offending, and why offenders’ children become involved in crime. By using criminal registers, census material, and newspaper reports from 1880 — 1940 for one industrial town in North-West England, this book asks how and why did some people stop offending, and what part did employment, relationship formation, and family responsibility play in that process; was criminality passed on from parent to child, and if so, how; and to what extent were persistent offenders also persistent victims?

Criminal Attempts

R. A. Duff — 2012-03-22

Author:: R. A. Duff
ISBN:: 9780198262688
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198262688.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book reflects the belief that a careful study of the Law of Attempts should be both interesting in itself, as well as being a productive route into a number of larger and deeper issues in criminal law theory and in the philosophy of action. By identifying the legal doctrines which courts and legislatures have developed or adopted, the book goes on to ask whether and how they can be rationalized or rendered persuasive. Such an approach involves paying detailed attention to cases. The book is unusual in that it grapples with English, Scots, and US law, showing great breadth of research as well as philosophical sophistication.

Crime In Ireland 1945–95:

John D. Brewer, Bill Lockhart, and Paula Rodgers — 2012-03-22

Author:: John D. Brewer, Bill Lockhart, Paula Rodgers
ISBN:: 9780198265702
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198265702.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book establishes Ireland's unique contribution to criminological research, addressing the effects on crime of its peculiar patterns of industrialisation and social change, as well as the effect on ordinary crime of a quarter of a century of civil unrest and terrorism. Crime trends are explored over a fifty-year period between 1945–95 at the national level for the two Irish countries as a whole, and at a city level for Belfast and Dublin. Trends in specific categories of crime, from murder to rape and drug crime, are also explored over the same period. The book makes a significant contribution by supplementing statistical material with ethnographic data. It reports on in-depth interview material among residents in two areas of Belfast, one in largely Catholic West Belfast and the other in largely Protestant East Belfast. In these interviews, those questioned speak of their own experiences of crime, the police, and the paramilitary organisations.

Crime and Markets

Vincenzo Ruggiero — 2012-03-22

Author:: Vincenzo Ruggiero
ISBN:: 9780199248117
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248117.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book examines a range of criminal activities conducted in different European contexts. Offences committed by individuals and groups endowed with different resources and statuses are examined. Each chapter contains an implicit rejection of generalizations and attention is paid to variations and differences. Rather than searching for a unified theory of crime, the author highlights the interpretive oscillations, which always occur when we are faced with criminal behaviour. In other words, each time we subscribe to one cause of crime we may realize that also the opposite cause possesses some reasonable validity. The originality of this book consists of the ‘causality of contraries’ running through the chapters, whereby a tentative aetiology identified in one context finds its complete overturning in another. The author regards the ‘causality of contraries’ as a crucial aspect of the anti-criminological tradition to which he claims affiliation. These ‘essays in anti-criminology’ deal with crimes of both the powerless and the powerful, and seek to demonstrate that both the deficiency and the abundance of legitimate opportunities may lead to crime. In the first part of the book a conventional criminal activity par excellence is examined, namely activity related to the economy of illicit drugs. The second part of the book addresses specific cases of elite criminality, including illicit trafficking in arms and human beings. The chapters devoted to the analysis of political and administrative corruption in Italy, France, and Britain provide yet other examples of how illegal practices may be imputed to one cause in one context and its opposite in another.

Courting Violence

Nigel Fielding — 2012-03-22

Author:: Nigel Fielding
ISBN:: 9780199279357
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279357.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Courting violence analyses how the courts handle cases of physical violence. It examines how lawyers and judges go about questioning defendants, witnesses and victims; how testimony and physical evidence is used; what victims, witnesses and defendants think of the trial process; and the views of lay and professional participants about violent offences. The book is based on original fieldwork at criminal trials and interviews with those involved. It is known that courtroom language, and the handling of evidence, influences the outcome of cases, and that those unfamiliar with the courts may feel bewildered and intimidated by courtroom language and procedures. The book examines the workings of such processes in cases of physical violence, with careful attention to assumptions made by lawyers, judges, and others as they relate to gender, social class, ethnicity, and people exhibiting patterns of behaviour, such as young men who drink heavily in groups. Key findings examine lay participants' understanding of courtroom procedure and language, satisfaction with their ability to participate competently, and willingness to assist the courts again. The book profiles the frustrations caused by the restricted role granted lay participants in trials, and reports problems concerning the experience of minority ethnic groups. Other themes include resource problems; the potential to improve proceedings by technological means; the role of the police, expert witnesses and interpreters; and variations in approaches to the judicial role. Understandings of violence are treated as contingent and legally reified, and victimisation as a negotiated process. The book uses data to show readers the contemporary practice of criminal trials in the crown courts, highlight some of the most contentious and sensitive problems in criminal justice, and to suggest improvements. It functions both as an overview of the work of the courts and as an insight into how society deals with serious crime.

Contrasting Prisoners' Rights

Liora Lazarus — 2012-03-22

Author:: Liora Lazarus
ISBN:: 9780199259830
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Human Rights Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259830.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This volume aims to provoke reflection on the English conception and treatment of prisoners' rights, through juxtaposition with the conception of prisoners' rights in Germany. First, the German and English understandings of prisoners' legal status are examined; secondly these understandings are placed against the background of broader social, political, and legal factors; and thirdly, the methodological problems of comparative law are addressed. English and German approaches to prisoners' rights present illuminating contrasts. In England, despite significant judicial activity in the development of a jurisprudence of prisoners' rights, protection of prisoners' rights remains partial and equivocal. Many aspects of prison life are left within the realm of executive discretion. This equivocal commitment to rights in England is juxtaposed with Germany's highly articulated rights culture and its ambitious system of prisoners' rights protection under the Prison Act 1976. The German Prison Act sets out foundational principles of prison administration, affords prisoners positive rights, defines the limitations of prisoners' constitutional rights, and provides prisoners with recourse to a Prison Court. Moreover, these rights and principles have been developed and refined in a substantial body of prison law jurisprudence over the last thirty years.

Constructing Victims' Rights

Paul Rock — 2012-03-22

Author:: Paul Rock
ISBN:: 9780199275496
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199275496.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Despite plentiful discussion at various times, the personal victim has traditionally been afforded almost no formal role in the criminal justice process. Victims' rights have always met with stout opposition from both judges and the Lord Chancellor, who have guarded defendants' rights; the maintenance of professionally-controlled and emotionally unencumbered trials; and the doctrine that crime is at heart an offence against society, State, or Sovereign. This book provides a detailed account of how this opposition was overcome, and of the progressive redefinition of victims of crime, culminating in 2003 in proposals for awarding near-rights to victims of crime. Based upon extensive observation, primary papers, and interviews, the book examines changes in the forms of criminal justice policy-making within the New Labour Government, observing how they shaped political representations and activities centred on victims of crime. The book reveals how the issues of new managerialism, restorative justice, human rights, race and racism (after the death of Stephen Lawrence), and the treatment of rape victims after the trial of Ralston Edwards came to form a critical mass that required ordering and reconstruction. This book unpicks and explains the resultant battery of proposals and the policy manoeuvre contained in the Domestic Violence, Crime, and Victims Bill of 2003. This Bill proposed the imposition of statutory duties on criminal justice agencies and the granting of access to an Ombudsman, as well as a National Victims' Advisory Panel.

Community Policing

Nigel Fielding — 2012-03-22

Author:: Nigel Fielding
ISBN:: 9780198260271
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198260271.001.0001
Published in print:: 1995
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Community policing seems always in vogue, yet its essential qualities remain elusive. There has been a rush to evaluate community policing before commentators have got to grips with what community police officers do which is distinctive. This book demonstrates, in detail, how community police officers go about such matters as gathering crime-relevant information from people in the local community, how they apply informal social control to public disorder situations, and how they ‘play’ the police organization itself in order to obtain resources they need and to secure their own advancement. However, such a brief is not sufficient in itself. The point is to use such a discussion of working practices to assess the conceptual apparatus which has been developed to understand community policing, and to evaluate the potential of community policing to achieve the objectives which policy-makers have set for it. That is the agenda of this book.

Censure and Sanctions

Andrew von Hirsch — 2012-03-22

Author:: Andrew von Hirsch
ISBN:: 9780198262411
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198262411.001.0001
Published in print:: 1996
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

A number of jurisdictions, including England and Wales after their adoption of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, require that sentences be ‘proportionate’ to the severity of the crime. This book discusses how sentences may be scaled proportionately to the gravity of the crime. Topics dealt with include how the idea of a penal censure justifies proportionate sentences; how a penalty scale should be ‘anchored’ to reduce overall punishment levels; how non-custodial penalties should be graded and used; and how political pressures impinge on sentencing policies.

CCTV and Policing

Benjamin J. Goold — 2012-03-22

Author:: Benjamin J. Goold
ISBN:: 9780199265145
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265145.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book is the first major published work to present a comprehensive assessment of the impact of CCTV on the police in Britain. Drawing extensively upon empirical research, the volume examines how the police in Britain first became involved in public area surveillance, and how they have since attempted to use CCTV technology to prevent, respond to, and investigate crime. In addition, the volume also provides a detailed analysis of the legality of CCTV surveillance in light of recent changes to the Data Protection Act and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Challenging many existing accounts of the relationship between the police and new surveillance technologies, the book breaks new ground in policing and surveillance theory, and argues that it is time for a major reassessment of both our understanding of how the police respond to technological change, and of the role played by such technologies in our society.

Can Gun Control Work?

James B. Jacobs — 2012-03-22

Author:: James B. Jacobs
ISBN:: 9780195176582
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176582.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

In America today, there are between 250 and 300 million firearms in private hands, amounting to one weapon for every American. Two in five American homes house guns. On the one hand, most gun owners are law-abiding citizens who believe they have a constitutional right to bear arms. On the other, a great many people believe gun control to be our best chance at reducing violent crime. While few — whether gun owner or anti-gun advocate — dispute the need to keep guns out of the wrong hands, the most important question has too often been dodged: What gun control options does the most heavily armed democracy in the world have? Can gun control really work? The last decade has seen several watersheds in the debate, none more important than the 1993 Brady Bill. That bill, this book argues, was the culmination of a strategy in place since the 1930s to permit widespread private ownership of guns while curtailing illegal use. But where do we go from here? While the Brady background check is easily circumvented, any further attempts to extend gun control — for instance, through comprehensive licensing of all gun owners and registration of all guns — would pose monumental administrative burdens. The book moves beyond easy slogans and broad-brush ideology to examine the on-the-ground practicalities of gun control, from mandatory safety locks to outright prohibition and disarmament. Casting aside ideology and abstractions, the book cautions against the belief that there exists some gun control solution which, had we the political will to seize it, would substantially reduce violent crime.

Bouncers

Dick Hobbs, Philip Hadfield, Stuart Lister, and Simon Winlow — 2012-03-22

Author:: Dick Hobbs, Philip Hadfield, Stuart Lister, Simon Winlow
ISBN:: 9780199288007
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199288007.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

In recent years, the expansion of night-time leisure has emerged as a key indicator of post-industrial urban prosperity, attracting investment, creating employment and re-generating the built environment. These leisure economies are youth-dominated, focusing upon the sale and consumption of alcohol. Unprecedented numbers of young people now flock to town centres that are crammed with bars, pubs and clubs, and the resulting violent disorder has over-run police resources that remain geared to the drinking patterns and alcohol cultures of previous generations. Post-industrial re-structuring has spawned an increasingly complex mass of night-time leisure options through which numerous licit and illicit commercial opportunities flow. Yet, regardless of the fashionable and romantic notions of many contemporary urban theorists, it is alcohol, mass intoxication and profit rather than ‘cultural regeneration,’ which lies at the heart of this rapidly expanding dimension of post-industrial urbanism. Private security in the bulky form of bouncers fills the void left by the public police. These men (only 7% are women), whose activities are barely regulated by the State, are dominated by a powerful subculture rooted in routine violence and intimidation. Using ethnography, participant observation and extensive interviews with all the main players, this book charts the emergence of the bouncer as one of the most graphic symbols in the iconography of post-industrial Britain.

Black Police Associations

Simon Holdaway — 2012-03-22

Author:: Simon Holdaway
ISBN:: 9780199573448
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573448.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book analyses the new phenomenon of Black Police Associations (BPAs) established in the majority of constabularies in England and Wales. The author takes a sociological and theoretical approach to the subject, in contrast to current criminology, which is more evaluative and policy oriented. The analysis is underpinned with the notion that race and ethnicity are socially constructed: the book describes and analyses how race and ethnicity are constructed and sustained within constabularies, and how they have changed during the last two decades, providing a sociological perspective on understanding race within criminal-justice institutions. The book covers the history of BPAs; the construction and consequences of the notion of ‘black’ as a political emblem within constabularies; the work and influence of BPAs (nationally and within constabularies); post-McPherson policing; new forms of racism within constabularies; ethnic identities amongst ethnic-minority police officers and BPAs; and the occupational culture. By analysing the work of BPAs within constabularies, the author posits a number of implications for change within the management of constabularies.

Arbitrary Justice

Angela J. Davis — 2012-03-22

Author:: Angela J. Davis
ISBN:: 9780195384734
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384734.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

What happens when public prosecutors, the most powerful officials in the criminal justice system, seek convictions instead of justice? Why are cases involving well-to-do victims often prosecuted more vigorously than those involving poor victims? Why do wealthy defendants frequently enjoy more lenient plea bargains than the disadvantaged? This book looks at the power of American prosecutors, revealing how the day-to-day practice of prosecutors can result in the unequal treatment of defendants and victims. Ranging from mandatory minimum sentencing laws that enhance prosecutorial control over the outcome of cases, to the increasing politicization of the office, the chapter uses stories of individuals caught in the system to demonstrate how the legal exercise of prosecutorial discretion can result in inequities in criminal justice. The chapter also covers recent incidents of prosecutorial abuse such as the Jena Six case, the Duke lacrosse case, and the Department of Justice firings.

After Homicide

Paul Rock — 2012-03-22

Author:: Paul Rock
ISBN:: 9780198267959
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198267959.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book describes the collective responses of bereaved people to the aftermath of violent death, a subject not dealt with in any detail in the literature that is currently available. It concentrates particularly on the birth, development, and organization of the self-help and campaigning groups that have emerged in the last decade. The book examines these as attempts to give institutional expression to interpretations of grief, and shows us that these attempts, in their turn, are implicated in a potent phenomenology of mourning. In addition, the book had special access to a number of groups and uses the information that has been gathered through this access to discuss the practical and political importance of the work of these groups, and their affects on policing, the media and the law.

The Adversarial Process and the Vulnerable Witness

Louise Ellison — 2012-03-22

Author:: Louise Ellison
ISBN:: 9780198299097
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299097.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Until quite recently it was commonplace to describe the witness as the ‘forgotten man’ in the criminal justice system. The last few years have seen a dramatic shift in thinking with an increasing recognition of the legitimate expectations and rights of witnesses within the criminal process. At the same time research has drawn attention to a host of factors that conspire to deny the courts access to the best evidence potentially available when so-called vulnerable and intimidated witnesses are called upon to testify in accordance with conventional adversarial trial procedures and methods. The official response so far embodies an approach best described as one of accommodation. Efforts have centred on improving the treatment of witnesses within the established trial framework while preserving an overall commitment to key tenets of adversarial theory. The latter include the principle of orality with its general insistence upon direct evidence and the use of cross-examination as a device for testing the credibility of witnesses. The central contribution of this book lies in its demonstration of the significant limitations of the prevailing approach, most recently manifest in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. By providing a broader theoretical framework for understanding the treatment of vulnerable witnesses it signals the need to extend the search for solutions beyond the boundaries of the paradigmatic adversarial model. Drawing upon modern psychological, socio-linguistic, and victimological study across common law jurisdictions, the book provides a critique of the special measures of the 1999 Act and of adversarial trial procedure more generally.

Action and Value in Criminal Law

Stephen Shute, John Gardner, and Jeremy Horder — 2012-03-22

Author:: StephenShuteUniversity of BirminghamJohnGardnerBrasenose College, OxfordJeremyHorderWorcester College, Oxford
ISBN:: 9780198258063
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198258063.001.0001
Published in print:: 1993
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Criminal law has been described as a species of political and moral philosophy; whether that can be said to be true is not at all certain, but criminal law can be the subject of philosophical study. The aim of this book is to explore some of the philosophical foundations of criminal law. English and North American contributors have produced chapters for this volume.

The Structures of the Criminal Law

R.A. Duff, Lindsay Farmer, S.E. Marshall, Massimo Renzo, and Victor Tadros — 2012-01-19

Author:: R.A.DuffDepartment of Philosophy, University of StirlingLindsayFarmerSchool of Law, University of GlasgowS.E.MarshallDepartment of Philosophy, University of StirlingMassimoRenzoYork Law School, University of YorkVictorTadrosSchool of Law, University of Warwick
ISBN:: 9780199644315
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644315.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This book is part of a series arising from an interdisciplinary investigation into the issue of criminalization, focussing on the principles and goals that should guide decisions about what kinds of conduct are to be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. This is the second volume in the series and it concerns itself with the structures of criminal law in three different senses. The first examines the internal structure of the criminal law itself and the questions posed by familiar distinctions between which offences are typically analysed. These questions of classification include discussion of the growing range of crimes and the problems posed by this broadening of definition. Should traditional ideas and conceptions of the criminal law be reshaped in light of recent developments or should these developments be criticized and refuted? Structures of criminal law also refer to the place of the criminal law within the larger structure of the law. Here, the book examines the relationships with and between the criminal law and other aspects of law, particularly private law and public law. It also looks at how the criminal law is made, and by whom. Finally, the third sense of structure is outlined — the relationships between legal structures and social and political structures. What place does the criminal law have within the existing political and social landscapes? What are the influences, both political and social, upon the criminal law, and should they be allowed to influence the law in this fashion? What is its proper role?

Retributivism Has a Past

Michael Tonry — 2012-01-19

Author:: MichaelTonrySenior Fellow, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Free University Amsterdam
ISBN:: 9780199798278
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199798278.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

The fundamental contrast between the ideas that punishment is morally justified because people have behaved wrongly (retributivist), and that punishment is morally justified only when it has good consequences (consequentialist/utilitarian), has long existed and most likely always will. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, retributivist ways of thinking became much more influential than they had been for the preceding century, but it is clear now that no paradigm shift from consequentialist to retributivist ideas occurred, and that thinking about punishment is in a period of flux. This book reconsiders the extent of its resurgence and its current prospects. Chapters covering topics such as punishment theory, law, and philosophy engage with contemporary ideas about restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, rehabilitation of offenders, and mandatory punishments that are difficult to reconcile with retributive analytical frameworks. It is crucial to understand why and when individuals can be deprived of their property, their liberty, and their lives in the pursuit of collective interests, and this book grapples anew with contemporary debates over these perennial questions.

The Ethics of Plea Bargaining

Richard L. Lippke — 2012-01-19

Author:: Richard L. Lippke
ISBN:: 9780199641468
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641468.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

The Ethics of Plea Bargaining offers a sustained argument for restrained forms of plea bargaining and against the freewheeling kinds of it that predominate in the United States. Rewards for admitting guilt are distinguished from penalties for exercising the right to trial. The latter appear in numerous guises and are shown to be indefensible. Modest and fixed sentence reductions for defendants who admit their guilt are urged. Deliberate overcharging by prosecutors and charge bargaining, it is argued, should be discouraged. Claims that large and variable charge and sentence reductions are needed to expand deserved punishment, reward remorseful offenders, encourage cooperation from defendants in implicating others suspected of crimes, enhance the deterrent profile of the criminal justice system, or salvage convictions when the evidence against accused individuals is weak are all shown to lack credibility. The contention that such reductions in punishment are justified because they are freely agreed by state officials and criminal defendants is likewise shown to be unconvincing, given the ways in and extent to which criminal justice practices ought to be structured by desert or crime reduction norms. Forms of overcriminalization are noted throughout the book and shown to complicate the analysis of plea bargaining practices.

The Ethics of Capital Punishment

Matthew H. Kramer — 2012-01-19

Author:: Matthew H. Kramer
ISBN:: 9780199642182
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642182.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Though much of this book is devoted to impugning all the standard rationales for capital punishment, the chief purpose of the volume is to advance an alternative justification for such punishment in a very limited range of cases. Pursuing both a project of critical debunking and a project of partial vindication, the book presents a rationale for the death penalty that is free-standing rather than an aspect or offshoot of a general theory of punishment. Its purgative rationale has not heretofore been propounded in any contemporary philosophical and practical debates over the death penalty. While the volume contributes to many areas of normative ethics, it contributes above all to the philosophy of criminal law with a fresh rationale for the use of the death penalty and with probing assessments of all the major theories of punishment that have been broached by jurists and philosophers for centuries.

The Ends of Harm

Victor Tadros — 2012-01-19

Author:: Victor Tadros
ISBN:: 9780199554423
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554423.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Victor Tadros sets out to defend the ‘duty view’ of punishment. On this view, the permission to punish offenders is grounded in the duties that they incur in virtue of their wrongdoing. The most important duties that ground the justification of punishment are the duty to recognise that the offender has done wrong and the duty to protect others against wrongdoing. In the light of these duties the state has a permission to punish offenders to ensure that they recognise that what they have done is wrong, but also to protect others from crime. Hence, the book offers a defence not only of a communicative view of punishment but also of general deterrence as central to the justification of punishment. This view is developed in the light of a non-consequentialist moral theory: a theory which endorses constraints on the pursuit of the good. It is shown that it is normally wrong to harm a person as a means to pursue a greater good. However, there are exceptions to this principle in cases where the person harmed has an enforceable duty to pursue the good. The implications of this idea are explored both in the context of self-defence, and then in the context of punishment. The book offers the most systematic exploration of the relationship between self-defence and punishment to date and makes significant progress in defending a plausible set of non-consequentialist moral principles. It also critically explores other theories of punishment, including retributivism and purely communicative theories, identifying unexamined deficiencies in these theories.

What is Criminology?

Mary Bosworth and Carolyn Hoyle — 2011-09-22

Author:: MaryBosworthReader in Criminology, University of Oxfordhttp://www.law.ox.ac.uk/profile/mary.bosworthCarolynHoyleReader in Criminology, University of Oxfordhttp://www.law.ox.ac.uk/profile/hoylec
ISBN:: 9780199571826
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571826.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

Criminology is a booming discipline, yet one which can appear divided and fractious. The chapters in this book respond to a series of questions designed to investigate the state, impact, and future challenges of the discipline: What is criminology for? What is the impact of criminology? How should criminology be done? What are the key issues and debates in criminology today? What challenges does the discipline of criminology face? How has criminology as a discipline changed over the last few decades? The chapters identify a series of intellectual, methodological, and ideological borders. Borders, in criminology as elsewhere, are policed, yet they are also frequently transgressed; criminologists can and do move across them to plunder, admire, or learn from other regions. While some boundaries may be more difficult or dangerous to cross than others it is rare to find an entirely secluded locale or community. In traversing ideological, political, geographical, and disciplinary borders, criminologists bring training, tools, and concepts, as well as key texts to share with foreigners. From such exchanges, over time, borders may break down, shift, or spring up, enriching those who take the journey and those who are visited. It is, in other words, in criminology's capacity for and commitment to reflexivity, on which the strength of the field depends.

State Responsibility for International Terrorism

Kimberley N. Trapp — 2011-09-22

Author:: Kimberley N. Trapp
ISBN:: 9780199592999
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592999.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

The rules of State responsibility have an important but under-utilised role to play in the terrorism context. They determine both whether a breach of primary obligations has occurred, through the rules of attribution, and the consequences which flow from that breach, including the possible adoption of responsive measures by injured States. This book explores the substantive international legal obligations and rules of State responsibility applicable to international terrorism and examines the problems and prospects for effectively holding States responsible for internationally wrongful acts related to terrorism. In particular, it analyses the way in which the implementation of State responsibility for international terrorism may be affected by the self-determination debate and any applicable lex specialis (including the jus in bello) and sub-systems of international law (including the WTO), as well as the interaction between determinations of individual criminal responsibility and the implementation of State responsibility. The international community has responded to the threat of international terrorism through both a security/jus ad bellum paradigm and by creating an international criminal law framework to address the conduct of non-State terrorist actors. The secondary rules of State responsibility analysed in this book cut across both approaches as they apply whether States breach their primary obligations relating to terrorism through participation in or a failure to prevent or punish terrorism. While this book identifies a number of problems in implementing State responsibility for international terrorism, it also highlights the prospects for the rules of State responsibility to make a crucial contribution to maintaining respect for obligations which lie at the very foundations of the contemporary international legal order, and to restoring the relationships between States if those obligations are breached.

Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea

Anna Petrig and Robin Geiß — 2011-09-22

Author:: Anna Petrig, Robin Geiß
ISBN:: 9780199609529
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609529.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

Since 2008 increasing pirate activities in Somalia, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean have once again drawn the international community's attention to piracy and armed robbery at sea. States are resolved to repress these impediments to the free flow of trade and navigation. To this end, a number of multinational counter-piracy missions have been deployed to the region. This book describes the enforcement powers that States may rely upon in their quest to repress piracy in the larger Gulf of Aden region. The piracy rules of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the legal safeguards applicable to maritime interception operations are scrutinized before the analysis turns to the criminal prosecution of pirates and armed robbers at sea. The discussion includes so-called shiprider agreements, the transfers of alleged offenders to regional states, the jurisdictional bases for prosecuting pirates, and the feasibility of an international(ized) venue for their trial. In addressing a range of relevant issues, this book presents a detailed and comprehensive up-to-date analysis of the legal issues pertaining to the repression of piracy and armed robbery at sea and assesses whether the currently existing legal regime is still adequate to effectively counter piracy in the 21st century.

The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture

Rachel Murray, Elina Steinerte, Malcolm Evans, and Antenor Hallo de Wolf — 2011-09-22

Author:: Rachel Murray, Elina Steinerte, Malcolm Evans, Antenor Hallo de Wolf
ISBN:: 9780199602193
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602193.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) establishes an independent international monitoring committee (SPT) which itself will visit states and places where persons are deprived of their liberty. It also requires states to set up independent national bodies to visit places of detention. This book, drawing upon events held and interviews with governments, civil society, members of UN treaty bodies, national visiting bodies and others, identifies key factors that have shaped the operation of these visiting bodies since OPCAT came into force in 2006. It looks in detail at the background to the adoption of the Protocol, as well as how the international committee, the SPT, has carried out its mandate in its first few years. It examines the range of places of detention that could be visited by these bodies, and the expectations placed on the national visiting bodies themselves. The book also places the OPCAT within the broader system of torture prevention in the UN and elsewhere and identifies a range of trends arising from the different geographical regions. As well as providing an insight into its work, this detailed examination of OPCAT also provides valuable lessons relevant for other new human rights treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on Enforced Disappearances which have similar provisions concerning national mechanisms.

The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law

Kevin Jon Heller — 2011-09-22

Author:: Kevin Jon Heller
ISBN:: 9780199554317
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554317.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

This book provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the twelve war crimes trials held in the American zone of occupation between 1946 and 1949, collectively known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs). The judgments the NMTs produced have played a critical role in the development of international criminal law, particularly in terms of how courts currently understand war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. The trials are also of tremendous historical importance, because they provide a far more comprehensive picture of Nazi atrocities than their more famous predecessor, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT). The IMT focused exclusively on the ‘major war criminals’ — the Goerings, the Hesses, the Speers. The NMTs, by contrast, prosecuted doctors, lawyers, judges, industrialists, bankers — the private citizens and lower-level functionaries whose willingness to take part in the destruction of millions of innocents manifested what Hannah Arendt famously called ‘the banality of evil’. The book is divided into five sections. The first section traces the evolution of the twelve NMT trials. The second section discusses the law, procedure, and rules of evidence applied by the tribunals, with a focus on the important differences between Law No. 10 and the Nuremberg Charter. The third section, the heart of the book, provides a systematic analysis of the tribunals' jurisprudence. It covers Law No. 10's core crimes — crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — as well as the crimes of conspiracy and membership in a criminal organization. The fourth section then examines the modes of participation and defences that the tribunals recognized. The final section deals with sentencing, the aftermath of the trials, and their historical legacy.

The Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Bert Swart, Alexander Zahar, and Göran Sluiter — 2011-09-22

Author:: BertSwartProfessor of International Criminal Law, Amsterdam Centre for International Law, University of AmsterdamAlexanderZaharLecturer in International and Criminal Law, Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Australiahttp://www.law.mq.edu.au/html/staff/azahar.htmGöranSluiterProfessor of International Criminal Law, Amsterdam Centre for International Law, University of Amsterdamhttp://home.medewerker.uva.nl/g.k.sluiter/
ISBN:: 9780199573417
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573417.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which is the focus of this book, was established in 1993 and is due to complete its trials by 2011. Easily the most credible and prodigious of the international tribunals established in this period, the ICTY is by far the most important source of case law on international criminal law and will most likely serve as an important frame of reference for the International Criminal Court and other courts dealing with international crimes, including national courts. The publication of the present book, in 2011, coincides with the year of cessation of trial activity at the ICTY. The book's purpose is to mark this significant milestone in international law with a series of in-depth, critical, reflections on the institution's legacy by eminent scholars and practitioners. Seventeen chapters analyse the main features of the ICTY's work, in an unprecedented examination of the institution's legitimacy, core principles, methodologies, unstated assumptions, political circumstances, and impact — and indeed, its legacy. The chapters tackle the problem of discussing the legacy of such a complex institution by carving out the most important component themes that have challenged the institution and presenting the results of research.

Crime, Punishment, and Responsibility

Rowan Cruft, Matthew H. Kramer, and Mark R. Reiff — 2011-09-22

Author:: RowanCruftSenior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Stirlinghttp://www.philosophy.stir.ac.uk/staff/r-cruft/cruft-page.phpMatthew H.KramerProfessor of Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridgehttp://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/mh-kramer/51Mark R.ReiffSenior Lecturer in Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Manchester School of Lawhttp://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/mark.reiff/personaldetails
ISBN:: 9780199592814
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592814.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

For many years, Antony Duff has been one of the world's foremost philosophers of criminal law. This volume(s chapters, taken from essays by many of the world's other leading philosophers of criminal law as well as a reply by Duff himself, explore some of the principal themes in his work. Some of the chapters concentrate on the topic of criminalisation. That is, they examine what forms of conduct (including attempts, offensiveness, and negligence) can aptly qualify as criminal offences, and what principled limits — if any — should be placed on the reach of the criminal law. Several of the other chapters assess the thesis that punishment is justifiable as a form of communication between offenders and their community. Those chapters examine the presuppositions (about the nature and function of community, and about the moral structure of atonement) that must be embraced if communication is to be a primary role for punishment. The remaining chapters examine the nature and limits of responsibility in the law, as they engage with philosophical debates over ‘moral luck’ by investigating the ways in which the law can legitimately hold people responsible for events that were not within their control. These chapters tie the first and third parts of the book together, as they explore the relationship between the principles that determine a person's responsibility and the principles that determine which types of actions can appropriately be criminalised. Finally, Duff responds with comments that seek to defend and clarify his views while also acknowledging the correctness of some of the critics' objections.

The Boundaries of the Criminal Law

R.A. Duff, Lindsay Farmer, S.E. Marshall, Massimo Renzo, and Victor Tadros — 2011-09-22

Author:: R.A.DuffDepartment of Philosophy, University of Stirlinghttp://www.philosophy.stir.ac.uk/staff/a-duff/duff-page.phpLindsayFarmerSchool of Law, University of Glasgowhttp://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/law/staff/lindsayfarmer/S.E.MarshallDepartment of Philosophy, University of StirlingMassimoRenzoLecturer in Law, University of Yorkhttp://www.york.ac.uk/law/staff/staffprofile%20MR.htmVictorTadrosProfessor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory, School of Law, University of Warwickhttp://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/staff/academic/tadros/
ISBN:: 9780199600557
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Philosophy of Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199600557.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

The series Criminalization is a set of volumes arising from an interdisciplinary investigation into criminalization, focussing on the principles and goals that should guide decisions about what kinds of conduct are to be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. Developing a normative theory of criminalization, the six volumes in this series aim to tackle the key questions at the heart of issue: By reference to what principles and goals should legislations decide what to criminalize? How should criminal wrongs be classified and differentiated? And how should law enforcement officials apply the law's specification of offences? This book is the first book in this series examining the scope and boundaries of the criminal law. Investigations into the scope of the criminal law have often focused on the harm principle, the principle that conduct can be justifiably criminalized only if it is harmful, or other master principles that might determine the proper scope of the criminal law. These chapters aim to make significant advances in the development of a broader range of ideas that might inform criminalization decisions. A range of issues are discussed, including the significance for criminalization of ideas of moral wrongdoing and of using a person as a means, the distinction between criminal law and other forms of legal regulation, the role of new technology in our understanding of the evolving scope of the criminal law, and the role of criminal justice officials in decision-making about criminalization. The chapters draw on legal and philosophical sources, and also on history, sociology, and social psychology in their investigations.

The Toughest Beat

Joshua Page — 2011-05-01

Author:: Joshua Page
ISBN:: 9780195384055
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384055.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

When a panel of federal judges ruled in August 2009 that California must release a full one-quarter of its prisoners, it did more than insist that 40,000 people go free. It asserted that what was once a “correctional crisis,” marked by deadly overcrowding and monumental prison mismanagement, had become chronic. No longer a temporary phenomenon, the “critical condition” of the Golden State’s prisons was now the normal state of affairs. This book shows how the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the labor union representing prison officers and other correctional workers, had transformed from a loose, fraternal organization into one of the most politically potent and feared interest groups in the nation. The book describes how the union promoted ultratough policies like “Three Strikes and You’re Out,” empowered political figures and groups that supported its interests and views on criminal punishment, and frustrated efforts to privatize prisons. And as its leaders made strides for its members, the union also influenced the nature, purpose, and scope of imprisonment. So to understand California’s deep and durable penal crisis, The book explains, we cannot neglect the story of this group so often known simply as “the powerful prison guards’ union.” The book draws on years of intensive research as he uses the lessons of the CCPOA to explore how actors create, shape, and protect their preferred status quo and considers whether, by making these mechanisms clear, we might open the door to real and lasting change in the penal field and beyond.

Retributivism

Mark D. White — 2011-05-01

Author:: Mark D.WhiteCollege of Staten Island/CUNYhttp://www.csi.cuny.edu/faculty/WHITE_MARK.html
ISBN:: 9780199752232
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199752232.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

This book offers analysis and explanations of new developments in retributivism, the philosophical account of punishment that holds that wrongdoers must be punished as a matter of right, duty, or justice, rather than to serve some general social purpose such as deterrence or individual purpose such as rehabilitation of the criminal or the vengeance of the victim. The contemporary debate over retributivist punishment has become particularly vibrant in recent years, focusing increasingly on its political and economic as well as its philosophical aspects, and also on its practical ramifications in addition to theoretical implications. The twelve chapters in this book, written by leading legal scholars and philosophers, cover a wide range of approaches, understandings, and applications of retributivism. The first part of the book deals with the basic concept of retributivism, such as how it should be understood, interpreted, and justified. The second part of the book delves more into the philosophical foundations of retributivism, focusing chiefly on Kant and Hegel as well as modern legal philosophers. The third and final part of the book discusses the practical implications of retributivism for policy and practices in criminal justice, including capital punishment, entrapment, the necessity defense, and sentencing of multiple offenders.

The Philosophical Foundations of Extraterritorial Punishment

Alejandro Chehtman — 2011-05-01

Author:: Alejandro Chehtman
ISBN:: 9780199603404
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603404.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

Why should a Spanish court take jurisdiction over an American lawyer accused of facilitating torture in Guantanamo Bay? What empowers a London magistrate to sign an arrest warrant for a former Chilean President? Can it be legitimate or morally defensible for an Israeli court to try a former Nazi whose crimes occurred outside Israel and indeed prior to the establishment of Israel? This book provides a systematic examination of normative foundations of extraterritorial punishment under international law. It examines when, and under what conditions, a state or an international tribunal would be morally justified in punishing an offender for a crime she committed extraterritorially. The first part of the book concentrates on the rules that regulate extraterritorial jurisdiction for what are commonly conceptualized as domestic crimes. The second part, by contrast, concentrates on international crimes and the jurisdictional rules applicable to them. While doing so, it also assesses the normative force of several objections often raised against extraterritorial prosecutions, such as the charges of show trials, victors' justice, tu quoque, or the claim that international criminal justice is liable to political hijacking or ultimately but an expensive taste for elites.

Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law

R.A. Duff and Stuart Green — 2011-05-01

Author:: R.A.DuffDepartment of Philosophy, University of Stirling, and the University of Minnesota Law Schoolhttp://www.philosophy.stir.ac.uk/staff/a-duff/duff-page.phpStuartGreenProfessor of Law at Rutgers Law School-Newarkhttp://law.newark.rutgers.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/stuart-p-green
ISBN:: 9780199559152
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Philosophy of Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559152.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

The challenges facing criminal law are many. There are crises of over-criminalization and over-imprisonment; penal policy has become so politicized that it is difficult to find any clear consensus on what aims the criminal law can properly serve; governments seeking to protect their citizens in the face of a range of perceived threats have pushed the outer limits of criminal law and blurred its boundaries. To think clearly about the future of criminal law, and its role in a liberal society, foundational questions about its proper scope, structure, and operations must be re-examined. What kinds of conduct should be criminalized? What are the principles of criminal responsibility? How should offences and defences be defined? The criminal process and the criminal trial need to be studied closely, and the purposes and modes of punishment should be scrutinized. Such a re-examination must draw on the resources of various disciplines — notably law, political and moral philosophy, criminology and history; it must examine both the inner logic of criminal law and its place in a larger legal and political structure; it must attend to the growing field of international criminal law, it must consider how the criminal law can respond to the challenges of a changing world. Topics covered in this book include the question of criminalization and the proper scope of the criminal law; the grounds of criminal responsibility; the ways in which offences and defences should be defined; the criminal process and its values; criminal punishment; and the relationship between international criminal law and domestic criminal law.

The Law of Habeas Corpus

Judith Farbey, Robert Sharpe, and Simon Atrill — 2011-05-01

Author:: Judith Farbey, Robert Sharpe, Simon Atrill
ISBN:: 9780199248247
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Constitutional and Administrative Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248247.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

Habeas corpus is the principal means under the common law for the protection of personal liberty. By this ancient writ, the court assumes control over the body of a prisoner so it can discharge him or her to freedom if no proper legal cause can be shown for detention. Habeas corpus secures release from any form of unlawful custody, whether decreed by the highest powers of the state or imposed by the lowest slave-trader. Its reach is as diverse as the forms of confinement. Throughout its history, it has proved adept at adapting to new challenges. It extends beyond the prison wall and has been invoked to determine the proper parental custody of a child and to free patients wrongly detained for compulsory medical treatment, indentured workers, conscripted soldiers, as well as individuals wrongly held in the war on terrorism. Looking first at the historical development of the writ, the book traces its growth in significance until its emergence as a cornerstone of the rule of law. Having established habeas corpus as a central constitutional principle, this book goes on to examine the role and limits of the remedy today. It describes the modern workings of habeas corpus and assesses its contemporary scope and function. The chapters explore the relationship between habeas corpus and fundamental rights.

The Policing Web

Jean-Paul Brodeur — 2011-01-01

Author:: Jean-Paul Brodeur
ISBN:: 9780199740598
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740598.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

This book seeks to give a comprehensive theory of policing. To set out the background for such a theory, the diverse types of agencies involved in policing, the history of policing, and the representations of policing in the press and in police literature are examined. The police are then defined by their use of a wide array of means, including violence, which are prohibited as legal violations for all other citizens. This definition is tested in the subsequent chapters bearing on the main components of the police web. First, the public police working in uniform are described in respect of who they are, what part of their activities are devoted to crime control, and the ways in which they operate. Second, criminal investigators are put in focus and empirical findings on how they clear up cases are discussed. The security and intelligence services are the subject of the next chapter, which develops a model that contrasts “high policing” (intelligence services) with “low policing” (public constabularies). The following chapter addresses the crucial issues that relate to private security, stressing the uncertainty of our current knowledge, and proposes a fully developed model integrating public and private security. The last chapter is devoted to military policing in its democratic and undemocratic variants, and to the extra‐legal social control exercised by criminal organizations such as the Mafia. In conclusion, the book tries to link the theoretical issues raised throughout the book and make his position explicit with respect to all of them.

Policing Problem Places

Anthony A. Braga and David L. Weisburd — 2010-09-01

Author:: Anthony A. Braga, David L. Weisburd
ISBN:: 9780195341966
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341966.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-09-01

In this book, Anthony A. Braga and David L. Weisburd make the case that hot spots policing is an effective approach to crime prevention that should be engaged by police departments in the United States and other countries. There is a strong and growing body of rigorous scientific evidence that the police can control crime hot spots without simply displacing crime problems to other places. Indeed, putting police officers in high crime locations is an old and well‐established idea. However, the age and popularity of this idea does not necessarily mean that it is being done properly. Police officers should strive to use problem‐oriented policing and situational crime prevention techniques to address the place dynamics, situations, and characteristics that cause a “spot” to be “hot.” Braga and Weisburd further suggest that the strategies used to police problem places can have more or less desirable effects on police‐community relations. Particularly in minority neighborhoods where residents have long suffered from elevated crime problems and historically poor police service, police officers should make an effort to develop positive and collaborative relationships with residents and not engage strategies that will undermine the legitimacy of police agencies, such as indiscriminant enforcement tactics. This book argues that it is time for police departments to shift away from a focus on catching criminal offenders and move towards dealing with crime at problem places as a central crime prevention strategy.

Placing Blame

Michael S. Moore — 2010-09-01

Author:: Michael S. Moore
ISBN:: 9780199599493
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Philosophy of Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599493.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-09-01

The book aims to give a comprehensive theory of the substantive criminal law. It first develops a theory of what a comprehensive theory of any area of law, such as criminal law, should look like. Explanatory, evaluative and descriptive theories are distinguished, and the partly normative nature of ‘descriptive’ theories is defended. Boundary conditions for what counts as an area of law are also developed and applied to criminal law. The book then proceeds in three parts. Part I defines and defends a retributive theory of punishment, a theory according to which the sole function of the criminal law is to punish those who deserve to suffer for their culpable wrongdoing. The other two parts of the book detail the implications of this view of the end of punishment, for the kinds of doctrines and institutions the criminal law both does and should have. Part II develops these implications for what is called the ‘general part’ of the criminal law. This part contains the doctrines, principles, and policies that apply to all crimes and that give each of them a common basic structure. The retributive point of punishment requires that there be a theory of when persons are morally responsible and thus deserving of punishment. The theory of responsibility that constitutes the general part of the criminal law, abstractly stated, is developed, first, by answering general questions about the role of various desert determiners, particularly emphasizing the role of causation and intention in the ascription of fault. The theory of responsibility is further developed by attention to the nature of the various desert-determiners: voluntary action, causation, intention, belief, absence of excuse, and basic moral agency and personhood. These are seen as the major determiners of moral desert. Part III develops the implications of retributive punishment for what is called the ‘special part’ of the criminal law. This is the part dealing with what a criminal code both does and should prohibit. The theory here developed is what often called a non-perfectionist, legal moralist theory of criminal legislation. The basic idea is that the criminal law has no business attempting to punish or coerce moral virtue but that, prima facie, it has every business in enforcing moral obligation. This theory of the proper reach of criminal legislation is, it is argued, an implication of the retributive point of punishment. Breach of moral obligation constitutes moral wrongdoing while lapses of virtue do not, which is why retributive punishment is fit for the one but not for the other. Depending on one’s moral views about the extent of our moral obligations, this alone can lead to a quite restricted view of the proper subjects of criminal prohibition. If we have no obligations about how we practice sexual intimacy, for example, then the legal moralist theory rejects these as proper subjects of criminal prohibitions. The book argues that the legal moralist theory should recommend even more restrictions on the proper subjects of criminal legislation in light of other considerations, such as epistemic doubt, the intrinsic goodness of liberty, the hidden costs of criminalization for certain behaviours that are unwitnessed, private, and victimless. The result is a theory of criminal legislation that is quite liberal in the restraints it urges on the content of the criminal law, even if quite illiberal in the form of the argument for those restraints.

Prosecuting Serious Human Rights Violations

Anja Seibert-Fohr — 2010-02-01

Author:: Anja Seibert-Fohr
ISBN:: 9780199569328
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Human Rights Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569328.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2010-02-01

Criminal punishment is increasingly regarded as a necessary element of human rights protection. There is a growing conviction at the international level that those responsible for the most serious crimes should not go unpunished. Though there is a wealth of legal writing on international criminal law, the question why and to what extent criminal prosecution is a necessary means of human rights protection has hardly been addressed comprehensively. This book examines the duty to prosecute serious human rights violations. It does so by exploring the concepts of impunity and amnesties, and by exposing flaws in criminal proceedings. With its survey of the relevant human rights instruments and jurisprudence, the subject of this book is placed at the interface of international criminal law and international human rights. The book analyses the rapidly growing body of human rights case law, dealing with criminalization, prosecution, and punishment of serious human rights violations. It identifies and critically examines the standards for the conduct of criminal proceedings developed by the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. As the analysis reveals shortcomings in the current conceptualization of the prosecution of human rights violations, the book develops a solid theoretical framework for future jurisprudence. By evaluating the relationship between criminal law and the protection of human rights, the book elucidates not only the potential but also the limits of the role human rights law can play in the emerging concept of international criminal justice. The underlying rationale for prosecuting serious human rights violations is also relevant for post-conflict situations, in which it is often argued that criminal punishment threatens peace and reconciliation. The question how to deal with post-conflict justice under international law is a continuing theme throughout the book.

The Collective Responsibility of States to Protect Refugees

Agnès Hurwitz — 2010-02-01

Author:: Agnès Hurwitz
ISBN:: 9780199278381
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Public International Law
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278381.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2010-02-01

In managing the growing number of refugees arriving in the industrialised world, beginning at the end of the 1970s, States have devised increasingly restrictive policies. The objectives of these measures have been to restrict access to the territory or, at least, to asylum procedures. Thus, while international co-operation in the refugee field traditionally focused on protection and assistance, the last two decades have been characterised by the emergence of transnational policies aimed at containing refugee flows, primarily on the European continent. The convoluted refugee routes — often described as ‘secondary’ or ‘irregular’ movements of refugees between countries of origin and their final destination — have been among States' major preoccupations. To combat what they often perceive to be proof of the fraudulent or manifestly unfounded nature of asylum claims, European States have passed legislation or agreed on international instruments designed to allocate and even evade responsibility for the examination of asylum applications. Even bolder solutions have been advocated more recently, such as the outsourcing of asylum procedures through regional or offshore schemes. This book presents a critical legal analysis of the mechanisms and arrangements devised by States to tackle secondary movements of refugees, and offers innovative solutions to the protection crisis afflicting the global refugee regime. After providing a breakdown of the various legal tools used by States to combat secondary refugee movements, it argues that, while the legality of these various arrangements is in doubt, the most appropriate way to address these protection failures is to strengthen and develop adequate international accountability mechanisms.

Rape and the Legal Process

Jennifer Temkin — 2010-01-01

Author:: Jennifer Temkin
ISBN:: 9780198763550
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198763550.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

Public disquiet has been intermittently but vehemently expressed about the crime of rape and the way it is handled by the criminal justice system. But in the 21st century the legal process still fails to provide an adequate response to sexual violation and abuse. This book examines some of the difficulties which this crime presents and analyses in detail how the legal system could and should be addressing them. Central issues considered include the experience of rape victims, their treatment by the police and the courts, and the inadequacies of the present law and the rules of evidence surrounding it. Changes enacted in many different jurisdictions, such as schemes for legal representation for victims of sexual violence are evaluated.

The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial

John H. Langbein — 2010-01-01

Author:: John H. Langbein
ISBN:: 9780199287239
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Legal History
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199287239.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

The adversary system of trial, now the defining feature of Anglo-American criminal procedure, developed late in English legal history. For centuries, defendants were forbidden to have trial counsel. Prosecution counsel was allowed but seldom used. The criminal trial was meant to be a lawyer-free occasion at which the defendant could hear the accusing evidence and respond to it in person. The transformation from lawyer-free to lawyer-dominated criminal trials happened within the space of about a century, from the 1690s to the 1780s. This book explains how the lawyers captured the trial. In addition to conventional legal sources, the book draws upon a rich vein of contemporary pamphlet accounts about trials in London’s Old Bailey. The book also mines these novel sources to provide the first detailed account of the formation of the law of criminal evidence. Responding to menacing prosecutorial initiatives (notably reward-seeking thieftakers and crown witnesses testifying to save their own necks), the judges of the 1730s decided to allow the defendant to have counsel to cross-examine accusing witnesses. By restricting defense counsel to the work of examining and cross-examining witnesses, the judges intended that the accused would still need to respond in person to the charges against him. But defense counsel manipulated the dynamics of adversary procedure to defeat the judges’ design, ultimately silencing the accused and transforming the very purpose of the criminal trial. Trial ceased to be an opportunity for the accused to speak, and became instead an occasion for defense counsel to test the prosecution case.

Jurisdiction and the Ambit of the Criminal Law

Michael Hirst — 2010-01-01

Author:: Michael Hirst
ISBN:: 9780199245390
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245390.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

In the modern world, it is increasingly difficult for criminal law to be applied on a narrow territorial basis. This is especially apparent in the context of international fraud, drug smuggling, Internet crime, and international terrorism. Against that background, this important new work examines some fundamental, but hitherto neglected, issues of domestic criminal law. Where, and to whom, does that law apply? When, in particular, can national law properly concern itself with conduct that takes place wholly or partly abroad? Should it primarily be concerned with delinquent conduct, or with the consequences of that conduct, which may take effect in a different part of the world? On what basis can a person who is not a UK national be regarded as offending against the law if he is not within the territories governed by that law? What is the position under international law? And how are the precise boundaries (especially the adjacent maritime boundaries) of a nation's criminal law defined? This book examines the territorial and extraterritorial application of the criminal law, identifying many defects, lacunae, and historical accidents; and considers possible ways in which some at least of the problems that beset these areas of law might be alleviated.

Human Rights in Criminal Proceedings

Stefan Trechsel and Sarah Summers — 2010-01-01

Author:: Stefan Trechsel, Sarah Summers
ISBN:: 9780199271207
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Human Rights Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271207.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

During the last 50 years, interest in human rights has grown dramatically. While newspapers focus mainly on dramatic issues such as unlawful killing, torture, disappearances, or violations of freedom of speech, institutions charged with the implementation of human rights (as set out in international conventions and covenants) most frequently deal with allegations of human rights violations during criminal proceedings. The increasing internationalisation of the administration of criminal law means that such cases are likely to become ever more important. This book examines the case-law of the international bodies dealing with such cases. The European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights, in particular, have accumulated a considerable quantity of case-law, which is particularly interesting because it is intended to be valid in both Anglo-Saxon and Continental systems of criminal procedure. The law of the European Convention on Human Rights is emphasised because of its advanced procedures and the quality and quantity of its case-law.

Expert Evidence and Criminal Justice

Mike Redmayne — 2010-01-01

Author:: Mike Redmayne
ISBN:: 9780198267805
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198267805.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

As an increasing range of expert evidence becomes available to it, the criminal justice system must answer a series of challenging questions: should experts be permitted to give evidence on the credibility of witnesses? How should statistical evidence be presented to juries? What relevance does syndrome evidence have to questions of criminal responsibility? This book explores these issues. The exposition utilizes work in a number of disciplines, and draws comparisons with the law and procedure in several different jurisdictions across the globe. While developing a general overview of the use of scientific evidence in the criminal process, the book makes use of detailed examinations of particular issues, such as battered women syndrome, fingerprinting, and eyewitness expertise. Through an analysis of expert evidence, it also invites reflection on a series of wider issues, among them the function of exclusionary rules and the nature of case construction.

Excusing Crime

Jeremy Horder — 2010-01-01

Author:: Jeremy Horder
ISBN:: 9780199225781
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199225781.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book examines the gradual emancipation of the individual in national and international law and the changing social attitudes towards personal choice in constituting identity. It demonstrates that this desire of persons for choice is not limited to Western industrial society but a historical development powered by such independent variables as urbanisation, the communications revolution, education, and economic development. These factors are changing the way persons affiliate: their attitudes towards nationality, religion, careers, sexuality, and gender roles. In the new climate of personal freedom, individuals increasingly select the components of their identity, choosing one or several from among multiple possible affiliations and questioning—even sometimes rejecting—the imposed or inherited forms of socialisation, but despite such resistance, the book demonstrates that we are now entering the age of the individual.

Defining Crimes

R.A. Duff and Stuart Green — 2010-01-01

Author:: R.A.DuffProfessor, Department of Philosophy, University of Stirlinghttp://www.philosophy.stir.ac.uk/staff/a-duff/duff-page.phpStuartGreenLouis B Porterie Professor of Law, Louisiana State Universityhttp://law.newark.rutgers.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/stuart-p-green
ISBN:: 9780199269228
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199269228.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This collection of essays, tackles a range of issues about the criminal law's ‘special part’ — the part of the criminal law that defines specific offences. One of its aims is to show the importance, for theory as well as for practice, of focusing on the special part as well as on the general part that usually receives much more theoretical attention. Some of the issues covered concern the proper scope of the criminal law, for example how far should it include offences of possession, or endangerment? If it should punish only wrongful conduct, how can it justly include so-called ‘mala prohibita’, which are often said to involve conduct that is not wrongful prior to its legal prohibition? Other issues concern the ways in which crimes should be classified. Can we make plausible sense, for instance, of the orthodox distinction between crimes of basic and general intent? Should domestic violence be defined as a distinct offence, distinguished from other kinds of personal violence? Also examined are the ways in which specific offences should be defined, to what extent those definitions should identify distinctive types of wrongs, and the light that such definitional questions throw on the grounds and structures of criminal liability. Such issues are discussed in relation to murder, rape, theft and other property offences, bribery, endangerment, and possession.

Criminal Responsibility

Victor Tadros — 2010-01-01

Author:: Victor Tadros
ISBN:: 9780199225828
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199225828.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

This book is concerned with the proper nature and scope of criminal responsibility. The book takes a philosophical rather than a doctrinal approach to this question: it is concerned with how the best understanding of criminal responsibility should shape the law, not with the law as it actually is. The general account of criminal responsibility that it provides is based on the relationship between the action performed and the character of the agent performing it. An action can be attributed to a defendant, it is argued, only if that action is connected in the proper way to the agent's character. The book then goes on to explore the philosophical foundations of a number of the most important doctrines of criminal responsibility in the light of this view. These include the role of causation, the extent to which we can be held responsible for failing to prevent harm, the significance of intentions to the definition of crimes, the proper definition of recklessness as well as a range of issues in criminal defences.

Criminal Law Theory

Stephen Shute and Andrew Simester — 2010-01-01

Author:: StephenShuteProfessor of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, University of BirminghamAndrewSimesterProfessor of Legal Philosophy, University of Nottingham
ISBN:: 9780199243495
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199243495.001.0001
Published in print:: 2002
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

Written by philosophers and lawyers from the United States and the United Kingdom, this collection of original essays offers new insights into the doctrines that make up the general part of the criminal law. It sheds theoretical light on the diversity and unity of the general part and advances our understanding of such key issues as criminalisation, omissions, voluntary actions, knowledge, belief, reckelssness, duress, self-defence, entrapment and officially-induced mistake of law.

Appraising Strict Liability

Andrew Simester — 2010-01-01

Author:: AndrewSimesterProfessor of Legal Philosophy at the University of Nottingham
ISBN:: 9780199278510
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278510.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2010-01-01

Strict liability is a controversial phenomenon in the criminal law because of its potential to convict blameless persons. Offences are said to impose strict liability when, in relation to one or more elements of the actus reus, there is no need for the prosecution to prove a corresponding mens rea or fault element. For example, in the 1986 case of Storkwain, the defendant chemists were convicted of selling controlled medicines without prescription simply upon proof that they had in fact done so. It was irrelevant that they neither knew nor had reason to suspect that the ‘prescriptions’ they fulfilled were forgeries. Thus strict liability offences have the potential to generate criminal convictions of persons who are morally innocent. This book is a collection of contributions offering a consideration of the problem of strict liability in the criminal law. The chapters, including European and Anglo-American perspectives, provide an examination of the fundamental issues. They explore the definition of strict liability; the relationship between strict liability and blame, and its implications for the requirement for culpability in criminal law; the relevance of European and human rights jurisprudence; and the interaction between substantive rules of strict liability and evidential presumptions.