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Academics and policy makers globally have made significant attempts to develop an understanding of processes through which individuals especially the youth align themselves to individuals with violent extremist ideologies which are a global threat. Kenya has attempted to minimize youth radicalization following a number of terror attacks in its territory. Despite many youths having been arrested, prosecuted or even eliminated, youth radicalization is still on the rise. Anchoring on the social identity theory, the criminal justice theory and the psychoanalysis theory, the study examined the nature, extent, and impact of youth radicalization in Mombasa and Kwale Counties. Descriptive survey design was adopted. The target population was 320 from which stratified simple random sampling was used to select a sample size of 96 respondents representing 30% of the target population. Both primary and secondary data were used. Validity and reliability of data were tested using Cronbach’s alpha. Data was analyzed and presented using descriptive statistics; percentages, frequencies, means and standard deviations. The finding of specific objective one was that youth radicalization into violent extremism and terrorism in the two counties was as a result of historical, religious, political, economic, social, geographical and criminal justice perceived injustices. The study recommends that measures should be put in place to resolve historical injustices since the youth feel that they have been suffocated when it comes to competing for jobs as a result of the historical injustice. There is need for affirmative action in relation to the youth from the study area. Community policing is encouraged to be able to assist the law enforcement agents when investigating specific cases and that community can come up with early warning mechanisms wherever there are signs of radicalization in a specific area within the counties.

In light of the 85.9% conviction rate reported by the National Prosecuting Authority for the year 2007/2008, one would expect crime in South Africa to be comparatively under control. However, with only 11% of all reported cases of murder resulting in convictions in this country, it becomes clear that crime is still a very real threat to the Constitutional freedom of its citizens. This article explores the problems encountered in the harvesting, processing and presentation of expert scientific evidence in our criminal courts. The court ruling in S v Van der Vyver 2008 JOL 21332 C is analysed and presents an interesting example of the erroneous use of science in the criminal justice system. A comparative study is undertaken to illustrate further the extent of the problems inherent in the use of science within the criminal justice system and probe possible solutions. The use of scientific evidence in the jurisdictions of England/Wales and the United States of America are used as a focus for the comparative studies.

This chapter focuses on the criminal justice system. It contains summaries of the different social theories that underpin both the criminal justice system and the fundamental principles relating to sentencing policy. The system is examined in three segments: pre-trial stages, trial stage, and post-trial stages. Each is discussed in turn. This chapter emphasizes the holistic approach by looking not only at what happens in courts, but also the police station and in post-trial contexts such as parole and criminal cases review. The place of the victim in the system is also considered. Particular emphasis is placed on how the current system is changing in the quest for improved efficiency.

This paper grants the hard determinist position thatmoral responsibility is not coherent with a deterministic worldview and examines hard determinist alternatives to traditionalpunishment. I claim that hard determinist accounts necessarilyinvolve consequentialist reasoning and discuss problems stemmingfrom them. I also argue that a revised model of traditionalconsequentialism called complex consequentialism, a view in whichmultiple values may be considered as ends, provides the best moralframework for a hard determinist account. Ultimately, I examine acriminal justice model that draws heavily on public health ideals andargue that it should considered a complex consequentialist account.

A confession is one of the most impactful pieces of evidence that can be presented in a criminal trial, yet very little is known about how perceptions of evidence change based on characteristics of the confession. While researchers know that "circumstances of the setting", such as length of interrogation, number of interrogators, and lack of sleep, increase the likelihood of false confessions, less is known about whether juror perceptions of the confession are impacted by these factors. The current research builds on the existing literature by evaluating the impact of these situational confession factors to determine whether jurors give weight to characteristics that are known to increase the likelihood of a false confession. Two experimental surveys were conducted, one using a sample of undergraduate students and one using a sample of jury-eligible adults, in order to determine how respondents perceived a confession's strength. Results showed that confessions arising from lengthy interrogations were perceived to be weaker than those arising from short interrogations. However, multiple interrogators and a lack of sleep had little impact on evidence perceptions; these factors indicate a questionable confession to experts, but not to jurors. The implications for criminal justice theory, criminal trials, and future research are discussed.

In previous papers I have argued for these two points: first, that the free will realist who would justify punishment has the burden of establishing to a high level – perhaps beyond a reasonable doubt, but certainly at least by clear and convincing evidence – that any person to be punished acted freely in breaking the law; and, second, that that level of evidence is simply not there. In this paper I argue for two parallel points: first, that the free will skeptic who would justify universal criminal quarantine is also faced with a burden of proof, the burden to establish to a similarly high level that no human being ever acts freely; and, second, that sufficient evidence for that conclusion is not there either. If we must choose between punishment and quarantine, the methods that constitute punishment are preferable to those that constitute quarantine, and so it may be that if there is not sufficient evidence to support either punishment or quarantine, the better course for the state is to choose to punish, as some have argued. If we are not to accept that conclusion, I believe, we must find an institution that, unlike both punishment and quarantine, can be justified on the evidence, but an institution which employs not the methods of quarantine but those of punishment. I suggest the “takings” doctrine as a basis for carving out such an institution. I solicit your comments.

This work focuses on the principle of legality and the various other maxims regarding the rights of the accused under Islamic criminal justice system. Its main findings are: that the principle of legality (mabda’ al-Ibahat) is the most basic principle (mabadi’ usuli) of Islamic criminal law. This principle has two postulates: 1) no crime without law; and 2) no punishment without law. The natural outcome of these two principles is another principle, that is, ‘no retroactive application of criminal law’. The majority of authors consider the principle of legality as absolute, however, this work curves out certain exceptions to it. In case a crime endangers the peace and security of the state or the interest of the community is involved or when giving retrospective effect would be necessitated by the interest of the community rather than the individual or when the application of the principle is beneficial to the accused, then it is allowed to give criminal law retrospective effect. In addition, this work finds out that the principle of legality is not against Islamic law as is the opinion of some scholars. This principle is intended to safeguard the fundamental rights of the accused either by not charging him or giving him lesser punishment even if that punishment be promulgated subsequent to the commission of the crime. Books of classical Islamic law do not focus on the basic principles of Islamic law. Those that exist are either mentioned in each separate chapter devoted to a specific crime or they must be found by deduction. Adhering to the principle of legality means that Islamic criminal justice system was well advanced since the dawn of Islam.

The movement of people across borders is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Yet it is still unclear how migration should be regulated to be fair to the sending societies, the host societies and the individual migrant. What is at issue? Are we discussing migration from an ethical or from a political philosophical perspective, or both? Are we discussing migration from a global justice perspective or social justice perspective? Do we consider political legitimacy and democratic self-determination as part of our analysis? How should we balance demands of justice in immigration compared to those of emigration?

Professors teach, and scholars theorize, something called ‘the’ criminal law. A new book by Lindsay Farmer is ostensibly about criminal laws in England over the past two centuries, but it shows that in that place and time there developed a concept of criminal law as a singular, cohesive, and enduring institution that can and should be theorized independently of any particular jurisdiction, statute, case, or code. The grip of this concept is powerful, this review essay argues. This way of thinking about criminal law now spans national borders – and it creates significant obstacles to penal reform in the United States and elsewhere. This review essay focuses on two implications of the modern understanding of ‘the’ criminal law: the claim that criminal law has some extra-legal nature, core, or essence and the conceptual divide between substance and procedure.

This paper addresses the intersection between two key concepts in international criminal justice, namely cooperation and complementarity. While it is recognised that domestic courts carry main responsibility for ensuring accountability for the commission of international crimes, there appears to be gaps in two areas. First, international law does not make provision for a comprehensive obligation to investigate and prosecute such crimes. Second, there is no comprehensive and robust interstate cooperation obligation, necessary to ensure successful domestic investigations and prosecutions. The paper assess two initiatives designed to fill these gaps, and considers their strengths, weaknesses and the possible synergies between them.

The Spanish criminal justice system has a specific Law for Gender Violence (1/2004). This article addresses what happens when a law with a feminist perspective is implemented in a predominantly patriarchal institution. The main aim of this paper is to approach women’s experiences in the Spanish criminal justice system, analysed as a technology of power producing women’s subjectivities, and focusing on their agency. We used a qualitative methodology with participant observation (24 sessions) and in-depth interviews with professionals working with gender violence (17) and women who reported gender violence by their heterosexual partner (11 individual and 1 group). We analysed data with the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti. The results focus on subjective processes and agency among reporting violence, the expedited trial, protection and restraining orders, and probation.

This article provides a brief introduction to some contemporary challenges found in the intersection of bioethics and international criminal law involving genetic privacy, organ trafficking, genetic engineering, and cloning. These challenges push us to re-evaluate the question of whether the international criminal law should hold corporations criminally liable. I argue that a minimalist and Strawsonian conception of corporate responsibility could be useful for deterring the wrongs outlined in first few sections and in answering compelling objections to corporate criminal liability.

Intention is at the heart of criminal law. If it is not the mens rea requirement found most often in offences, it is still the standard against which other grades of fault tend relatively to be judged. It has generated much controversy, as the crucial question, "Did the defendant intend X?" is resistant to clear answers. This paper argues that intention‐questions are difficult because intention is not the thing law takes it to be: Importantly, contrary to law's assumptions, it is neither a state of mind nor is it connected in an exclusive manner to the reasons for which we act.

Previous research finds that variations in sentencing outcomes still exist among similarly situated individuals, especially among drug offenders. While courtroom actors are often the focus of sentencing disparities, law enforcement officers are rarely studied. This is problematic because criminological research has yet to explore whether law enforcement could influence sentencing decisions. The current study aims to discover the influence of a previously ignored legal variable, investigation workload, on sentence length and directly examine an untested criminal justice theory, Optimal Law Enforcement Theory. This study will explore these overlooked concepts with a rare dataset that contains information on individuals convicted of prescription drug trafficking in Florida from 2011-2013. We find that investigation workload does influence sentencing, with offenders convicted from a high police workload being significantly more likely to experience longer sentences than offenders convicted from a low investigation workload. Limitations and policy implications are also discussed.

The present article discusses the “peace versus justice” dilemma in international criminal justice through the lenses of the respective legal (and political) theories of Judith Shklar and Hannah Arendt—two thinkers who have recently been described as theorists of international criminal law. The article claims that in interventions carried out by the International Criminal Court (ICC), there is an ever-present potentiality for the “peace versus justice” dilemma to occur. Unfortunately, there is no abstract solution to this problem, insofar as ICC interventions will in some cases be conducive while in others, they will be deleterious to peace. If a tension between peace and justice arises in a particular case, the article asserts, the former must be prioritised over the latter. Such a prioritisation, however, requires a vision of the ICC as a flexible actor of world politics which is situated at the intersection of law, ethics and politics, rather than a strictly legalistic view of the court. Ultimately, then, the present article seeks to probe whether the legal and political theories of Shklar and Arendt—in isolation, but ultimately also in combination—support such a flexible vision of the ICC. Publisher PDF

In this article, we offer a critical examination of the long and rich history of criminal justice scholarship in the pages of Social and Legal Studies. We do so by identifying and exploring a dialectical tension in such scholarship, between the recognition of the role of criminal justice as an instrument of violence, exclusion and control on the one hand and the effort to seek, through or perhaps beyond the critique of criminal justice, an emancipatory project. We explore this tension by examining four areas in scholarship: popular justice, social control and governmentality, gender and sexuality and transitional justice. Relating forms of critique to the historical development of a unipolar political world order from the time of the journal’s inception, we argue that the criminal justice scholarship in Social and Legal Studies positions it, like the world it describes, in a sort of ‘interregnum’. This is a place where the tension between the two poles of emancipation and control is evident but shows few signs of resolution. Each of the four themes displays a different critical perspective, one that reflects a different response to living in a world where legal, social and political emancipation struggles against the weight and direction of history. Critique nonetheless reflects on criminal justice to reaffirm the need for emancipatory change and consider how it may be achieved.

Recent years have seen an increased reliance on the Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as a method of evaluating the prestige of academic journals. While the JIF has existed for many years...

A forensic analysis from a criminal justice expert on the weaknesses in the findings and recommendations of the Lammy Review into Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic disproportionality in the UK’s criminal justice system. It comments on the remit (which excludes policing), the lack of real action over police gang databases and the joint enterprise ‘charge’, the inadequate understanding of plea bargaining and influence of charging, the need for a deeper understanding of outcomes particularly at the Crown Court, and the weaknesses in merely asking for more Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation in the system. The statistical review, the author concludes, produces snapshots of marginal disproportionality at selected stages in the process and hence an episodic analysis of criminal justice, rather than looking at the overall system’s effect in producing differential outcomes for the various ethnic groups. See also Liz Fekete, ‘Lammy Review: Without racial justice, can there be trust?’ ( Race & Class, doi: 10.1177/0306396817742074).

Recent scholarship has given increasing attention to studying women’s involvement in conflict and mass violence. However, there is comparatively less discussion of the experiences of women as actors and perpetrators in conflict, and limited discussion of women as defendants in international criminal tribunals. This article explores this under-researched area. By analysing legal materials from the cases of six female defendants, this article investigates the extent to which legal discourses are shaped by stereotypes regarding femininity, conflict and peace. It identifies three gender narratives—mothers, monsters and wives—used in relation to female defendants, which highlight the incompatibility of femininity with violence, and deny women’s agency in political and military contexts. Thus, this article concludes that female defendants in international criminal tribunals are viewed through gendered lenses, and discussed in accordance with gendered themes. This gendered justice is problematic, as it reinforces patriarchal gender stereotypes, and may hinder attempts to facilitate gender justice.

Restorative justice might seem like a benign alternative to prison, but it is full of pitfalls, particularly when it is still enmeshed in the criminal justice system. Nowhere is this more true than with sex workers, who are either punished for their work or morally castigated for it. The criminal justice system's interventions into the sex trade, even when using programs based on restorative justice, fails to address the harms and conflicts women experience in the sex trade and street economy. A major reason restorative programs fail to serve women in the sex trade is because it remains tethered to the criminal justice system, which carries traditional punitive consequences. When women entrenched in these conflicts are given the space, support, and freedom, they are able to develop relationships and resolutions that better exemplify restorative values. This paper explores the limitations of the current relationship between restorative justice and the criminal justice system and then highlights how the relationships and resistance strategies of the Young Women's Empowerment Project demonstrated restorative justice praxis in the sex trade.

International criminal law, for much of its history, has been a law characterized by dissents. However, international law scholarship has largely ignored the role of the dissenting opinion in shaping the discourse of international criminal law. This Article critically examines the nature and function of dissents at international criminal tribunals at a particularly crucial moment in the life of these courts, when the project of establishing accountability of mass atrocity through criminal trials is increasingly under attack. The Article argues that the dissenting opinion is a crucial legal device that can have a transformative potential in international criminal adjudication through its creation of a civic space for contestation that paradoxically shores up the legitimacy of the international criminal trial. To this end, it constructs a discrete category of dissenting opinions at international criminal courts: “radical dissents”. The content and rhetorical style of a radical dissent enables actors invested in the project of international criminal justice to use it as a vital dissentient voice both within and outside the courtroom. Agents who operate within the confines of the legal trial, such as defendants, lawyers, appellate chambers, and future judges, may channel its authority to challenge the idiom in which the majority judgment speaks. Likewise, the radical dissent could provide a legal language through which academics, victims, civil society, and other affected communities continue to grapple with constructing and coming to terms with events that defy human understanding.

Although there is debate in the scientific and clinical literature about how much choice addicts have concerning the use of drugs and related activities, this article demonstrates that Anglo-American criminal law is most consistent with the position that addicts have substantial choice about engaging in crimes involving their addiction. It suggests that the criminal law's approach is consistent with plausible and reasonable current scientific and clinical understanding of addiction and is therefore defensible, but it also suggests that the law is unduly harsh and far from optimum.

A concept of social justice in which the social names a subset of justice suggests that the social constitutes a distinct sphere within which a distinctively social justice is produced and experien...

Sentencing commissions can – and should – be at the core of the criminal justice system. In this piece, I highlight how sentencing is central to the justice enterprise. Properly conceived, topics ranging from bail and prosecutorial discretion to presentence investigation reports and clemency are really sentencing issues. However, calling our criminal justice apparatus a “system” often means torturing the word “system” beyond recognition. An active, well-functioning sentencing commission can lead and help stitch together these often disparate pieces. Frankly, there is no one else. No other widely distributed, existing institutional actor even comes close. Having commissions at the core does not mean that commissions should be in charge of every aspect of the criminal justice process. Rather it means that commissions are uniquely positioned to see interactions and problems, and to facilitate coordinated responses. Commissions should be the hub into and out of which criminal justice information, conversations, and policies flow. In the right environment, commissions can exert a gravitational pull on the other aspects of the apparatus in an effort to bring us closer to becoming a true system. I then discuss some of the key attributes – including independence, transparency, and integrity – that can help commissions achieve and maintain their proper place at the core. This essay is a revised and expanded version of the 2016 Richard P. Kern Memorial Keynote Address given at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions.

Essentially, Islamic law is modern law since it has recognized restorative justice for jarimah qishas (murder or torture). The concepts of restorative justice in Islamic criminal law realize fairness and balance to the offender and the victim themselves. Restorative justice in Islamic criminal law as explicitly provided in Q.S. al-Hujurat (49): 10 and Q.S. Asy-Syuura (42): 40. The Quran regulates peace and forgiveness in solving a crime. The existence of peace and forgiveness aims to realize the unity and sustainability of life as a purpose of the laws. Peace and forgiveness are premium remedium while the penalty is ultimun remediun in Islamic criminal law. Otherwise, in modern criminal law, the penalty is premium remedium. Key w ords : Forgiveness, Peace, Qishas, Restorative Justice

This paper examines the political implications of the criminal justice system for those who experience it indirectly: the friends and extended families of individuals who become caught up in the criminal justice system through heightened police surveillance, arrest, probation/parole and incarceration, which scholars have termed “custodial citizenship” (Lerman and Weaver 2014, 8). Contact with the criminal justice system is increasingly common in the United States, which incarcerates more of its citizens than any other western democracy (West, Sabol, and Greenman 2010). In addition to the 2.3 million people currently behind bars scholars estimate that more than 19 million have a felony (Uggen, Manza, and Thompson 2006). Fully 23% of Black adults have a criminal background, and Latinos make up 50% of federal inmates, highlighting extreme racial disparities in American criminal justice (Meissner et al. 2013). A growing body of research explores the impact of criminal justice contact on political participation finding that depressed voter turnout is the result whether one has been incarcerated, arrested, or lives in a high-contact community (Burch 2011, 2013; Lerman and Weaver 2014).

In theory, crime victims have several rights and privileges—ranging from the rights to be heard to the right to confer with the prosecution. However, they are still considered as the forgotten individuals in the system because of underlying issues associated with the implementation of victims’ rights laws. Today, most states do not have any effective mechanisms of implementing legislation guaranteeing the rights of victims. The primary purpose of this article is to offer a comparative assessment of victims’ rights legislation in USA and to discuss some of the issues inherent in the implementation of these laws. Issues such as the lack of professional knowledge, the lack of enforcement mechanisms, strict eligibility criteria for compensation, varying definitions of victim across jurisdictions, and the limited scope of most crime victim legislation are discussed. The article also discusses ways to address the issues identified.

Transitional justice is broadly understood to refer to formal efforts to deal with past wrongs in the midst of a transition from an extended period of conflict or repression to democracy. In this paper, I consider the role of international criminal trials in transitional justice. I argue that such trials may contribute to transitional justice, but such contributions are conditional on two main factors. The first factor is time. The second factor is what other transitional justice responses are adopted domestically.

Periodically miscarriages of justice become newsworthy and inform not only those who may have some responsibility for their occurrence and rectification, but the general public as well. At those times proposals for reform tend to ensue, and reforms occur. But such occasions are rarely considered historically or understood from an evolutionary perspective. This article undertakes to offer that missing feature. It attempts to inform the periodic highly charged discussion of miscarriages of justice with an understanding of their ingredients illustrated by both some recent and some much older history. The article presents the thesis that miscarriages of justice are a component of the workings of all criminal justice systems, part of their operations, rather than their malfunction. It shows how miscarriages of justice are the criminal justice system’s answer to a prior problem, the functional need to convict more persons than can be shown, with certainty, to have committed the crimes of which they have been charged. This thesis has the implication of inserting some modesty into proposals for reform, not to decry their attempts, but to inspire less naivety. The article focuses on the changing methods of the criminal trial, throughout the second millennium and up to the present day, as an expression of the underlying problematique that represents its thesis.

The Model Criminal Code (MCC) was intended to be a Code for all Australian jurisdictions. It represents a high point of faith in the value and possibility of systematising, rationalising and modernising criminal law. The core of the MCC is Chapter 2, the ‘general principles of criminal responsibility’, which outlines the ‘physical’ and ‘fault’ elements of criminal offences, and defines concepts such as recklessness. This paper assesses the MCC as a criminal law reform project and explores questions of how the MCC came into being, and why it took shape in certain ways at a particular point in time. The paper tackles these questions from two different perspectives—‘external’ and ‘internal’ (looking at the MCC from the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’). I make two main arguments. First, I argue that, driven by a ‘top down’ law reform process, the MCC came into being at a time when changes in crime and criminal justice were occurring, and that it may be understood as an attempt to achieve stability in a time of change. Second, I argue that the significance of the principles of criminal responsibility, which formed the central pivot of the MCC, lies on the conceptual level—in relation to the language through which the criminal law is thought about, organised and reformed.

Q1: What are some of the key features of the international criminal justice system that have attracted you to work in this area?I began in the human rights field before the International Justice fi...