Howard Journal of Crime and Justice最新文献

This study examined the influence of job demands (role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload and dangerousness) and job resources (job variety, supervisor structure and training views) on employee perceptions of procedural justice, general perceptions of distributive justice, and specific perceptions of distributive justice. Using a sample of 160 employees at a high-security prison, the regression analyses found that only demands of role conflict was inversely correlated with procedural justice and both distributive justice measures. Role ambiguity was inversely related to procedural but was not related to either dimension of distributive justice. Furthermore, dangerousness was inversely associated with distributive justice (both general and specific), but it was not correlated with procedural justice. Among the job resources, job variety was positively associated with procedural and both distributive justice measures. Supervisor structure was predictive of procedural but not distributive justice. Role overload, and training views had non-significant relationships with all the justice measures.

Highly criticised and widely discussed, there is a general consensus that the defence is in dire need of reform: from its stigmatic title to the narrow interpretations of both limbs of the Rules, it is a rarely used and outdated defence. Despite the vast amount of commentary on this topic, The insanity defence: International and comparative perspectives, part of the Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice series, provides a fresh outlook on this defence, collating internationally renowned experts and a diverse range of jurisdictions into one edited collection.

The book aims to explore the insanity defence in other jurisdictions and to ‘point the way to a balanced assessment of how the insanity defence might be altered and improved’ (p.369). Both of these aims are, in my view, achieved. The breadth of jurisdictions covered within this collection provides the reader with a variety of alternative interpretations or possible amendments to the M'Naghten Rules, as well as cautioning against directions in which the defence ought not to go.

The insanity defence begins with a critique of the M'Naghten Rules in England and Wales and an exploration of reform proposals, subsequently moving on to address other common law jurisdictions, including: Scotland, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Beyond this, four civil law jurisdictions are covered: France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, before consideration is made of the insanity defence in China and under international criminal law.

Of the civil law jurisdictions, Meynen, in Chapter 12, suggests that the open criterion set out in the Dutch Criminal Code creates the potential for ‘disparity’ (p.285), of which we should take heed. The tragic mass killing by Anders Breivik in Norway triggered a move away in that country from what was arguably a successful medicalised model of the insanity defence, demonstrating the dangers of ‘knee-jerk’ legislation in the wake of tragedy. It is hoped that Gröning's suggestion that the move is less significant than initially suspected proves to be correct (p.314).

Key themes emerging from this collection concern the ubiquity of the M'Naghten Rules, versions of which are still used, albeit more flexibly, in many jurisdictions. Ireland, for example, has an additional volitional element. The Canadian Supreme Court has a ‘pragmatic and somewhat chameleon interpretation of the Rules (p.122), while Australia seems to offer ‘an incoherent patchwork of inconsistent provisions’ (p.196), many of which also reflect the Rules. Even Article 31(1)(a) of the Rome Statute ‘evokes’ the Rules (p.344), despite the International Criminal Court having no accepted procedure for detention in the highly unlikely event of a successful plea.

Other themes in this book include the willingness of most jurisdictions to link a mental disorder to the defendant's conduct, as well as similarities in

Most countries fail specifically to task the judiciary with upholding the autonomy of the child and protecting children's rights and interests when sentencing a mother to a custodial penalty. Author and judge Alice Macharia argues that the focus of criminal courts should be widened to include the needs and the welfare of a woman's dependent children as a mandatory legal requirement.

In this reworking of her doctoral thesis, Judge Macharia debates that sentencing without consideration for the impact on children punishes them for their mother's crimes, with consequences for the children's future well-being. Macharia discusses the conflicting obligations for judges both to sanction the offending and to uphold the rights owed to children to protect their best interest, describing these as two competing duties of care: the duty to protect the public from crime; and the duty to protect children's rights. However, she argues that imprisoning children with their mothers is a form of discrimination against the child – an argument based on Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and consistent with the landmark South African Constitutional Court case, S v. M ([2007] ZACC 18) in which Justice Albie Sachs stated that children ‘… cannot be treated as a mere extension of his or her parents, umbilically destined to sink or swim with them’ (para. 18).

The book describes that the practice in most jurisdictions globally is for children to remain invisible and unheard, irrespective of a country's level of development, and therefore that the goodwill of sentencers to protect the rights of the child is not enough, with the author arguing: 'at best, criminal justice systems are focused on the child's immediate basic needs and do not consider the long-term impact of the rights violation on the adult individual the child will grow into’ (p.64). Macharia argues that consideration of the impact on children when a mother is sentenced is not a new concept in Kenya, as the state already commutes the death penalty to life imprisonment if a woman is pregnant. The book argues powerfully for the need to take this consideration further.

Throughout, Macharia's book argues that the penal environment is designed to punish, meanwhile a child has no committal warrant and has not been convicted of anything. Without such a warrant: 'he or she is administratively invisible’ (p.74). This results in a lack of co-ordination and communication between agencies and even institutional neglect such as there being no allocation of additional food to support children living in prison with their mothers.

The book states that: ‘… the criminal process cannot assume that it has moral authority to ignore the devastating impact its decisions have on innocent children’ (p.28). As children are not culpable for their mother's offence, the author argues that welfare and best interest principles should carry greater weight in shaping the duty

In early 2021, half of the youth detention centres in Ontario, Canada, were abruptly closed. We ask how this development can be understood in relation to broader explanations of youth detention closures in Canada, which cite the success of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) and the best interests of youth, and the broader international context. Using a process tracing methodology to analyse existing data, we demonstrate that these closures had less to do with the interests of youth, and were primarily a cost-effective calculation. We demonstrate this by pointing to three key developments: (i) the transference of institutionalised carceral logics onto community service providers; (ii) an undermining of the principle of ‘relationship custody’; and (iii) a focus on high-capacity and high-security detention centres, over smaller, locally situated open detention centres.

The role of identity construction has been a central theme in empirical analyses of desistance from crime. Despite the novelty of these studies, their findings are predominantly situated in the post-imprisonment context. There has been limited attention on the drivers of identity change for prisoners who are incarcerated. Based on 16 interviews conducted in an open prison for men, this article demonstrates how experiences of self-reflection shape identity reconstruction for prisoners nearing release and serve as important modes of adaptation to prison life. The article ends with a discussion on the key implications of the study's findings.

Accused individuals employ various techniques in response to the challenges posed by living with bail conditions. By asking ‘what advice would you give to an accused individual who must appear in bail court and who will be assigned conditional bail’, this study assesses how individuals navigate release on bail in the community. A thematic analysis of interviews with 108 accused yielded three master themes: ‘abiding by the system’; a ‘broken system’; and ‘working the system’. The findings add to current research by identifying points of similarity, but also difference, in how common discourses used by bail court actors and bail scholars – including responsibilisation, self-governance, and accountability – are responded to by accused. The results reveal how individuals accused of a crime find ways to assume a more advantageous position within a system largely perceived as working against them.

This article uses a historical case study to significantly advance theoretical debates on path dependence in institutional change and continuity. In particular, it argues that the heuristic of ‘jumping tracks’ can be productively developed to explain how institutional arrangements can shift into different policy arenas. The historical criminological case study examines welfare provision and penalties in colonial Australia. Substantively, the case study provides historical support to current claims that the boundaries between crime, poverty and welfare are fluid. Just as the shadow of the contemporary carceral state is enlarging non-criminal pathways to punishment, it will be shown that in 19th-century Tasmania the shadow of the penal colony acted to control paupers. When the Tasmanian penal system began to be dismantled, the institutional arrangements that had developed within it jumped tracks to the pauper system. Fundamentally, the key theoretical proposition is that path dependence can work across institutions by jumping tracks.

The focal point of this article is the design of a game-based tool for dialogue (‘Dads’ Round’) developed in collaboration with the Danish Prison and Probation Service for a Parenting Program. The tool is unique insofar as it includes stories collected from prisoners’ children about their troubled relationship with their fathers. By evaluating the tool through interviews with incarcerated fathers, we demonstrate how they work together as peers to assess how such a tool works to help assume parenting roles during incarceration. Through the fathers’ statements, the stories they share and their collaborative scaffolding, we are able to identify the tool's potential effect on parenting practices as well as pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of the tool. Our study suggests that new notions of parenting and doing family must be carefully considered in the design of parenting programmes.

A sustained history of white supremacy is in the system of policing. Police engage in state-sanctioned murders of African American women. Too many times, police state-sanctioned violence is disregarded. A critical analysis and applicable theoretical frameworks were used to examine the Fort Worth Police Department's (FWPD's) Use of Force Policy in the case of Atatiana Jefferson's murder. The findings show cultural situatedness impacted this case. In other words, the normed cultural, social and environmental factors versus policy components influenced the case. The employed theoretical perspectives provide policymakers and researchers with critical viewpoints to deconstruct hierarchical systems of power that perpetuate injustices.

From austerity to Brexit to Covid-19, the UK is facing a series of interlinked crises. Regarding austerity in particular, public services like the National Health Service, local government and social security benefits have been affected. Even the criminal justice system has not been spared from financial cuts. Yet, the impoverished status of these key public services defies the logic that the UK is currently the sixth largest economy in the world (World Bank, 2023).

The progressive underfunding of the UK criminal justice system is pushing it to a breaking point. In fact, the position that the system is at breaking point is the one thing on which all our politicians seem to agree. What has not been settled, however, is how the system is being pushed to this state, and at what costs? Does the criminal justice system still serve its purposes to maintain law and order and ensure that offenders and victims receive justice?

Essentially, these are the dilemmas that Daniel Newman and Roxanna Dehaghani explore in their recent book, Experiences of criminal justice: Perspectives from Wales on a system in crisis. Their findings – contextualised in the criminal justice system in Wales – illuminate how austerity blights social safety nets for individuals, and how existing issues that run against the backdrop of the criminal justice system compound their experiences. Again and again, the text in this book reminds me of Callinicos's (2012) observation: those who engineered or profited from the asset bubbles do not bear the brunt of the resulting austerity; rather, workers and the poor do.

Operationalising austerity, Experiences of criminal justice is the result of qualitative research that Newman and Dehaghani undertook in 2018 and 2019. The study involved 69 participants who reported on how they experienced a criminal justice system in crisis. These findings were presented thematically in the concerted effort to champion the voices and experiences of those marginalised by institutionalised state practices.

Newman and Dehaghani put forth a compelling case for the uniqueness of Wales from geographical and cultural perspectives in their opening chapter. The authors also remind us of the slow burn of inequality experienced by people in Wales through increased poverty, social disadvantages and marginalisation, all of which further support the latest statistics: Wales has the highest number of individuals living in relative income poverty (23%) compared with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (Welsh Government, 2021). Despite these idiosyncrasies, Wales continues to be treated as a silent partner of England in the criminal justice system, while power over this system remains centralised despite the devolution of power in this nation.

Equitable access to justice is characteristic of a healthy state-citizen relationship. Yet, as Chapter 2 progresses, Newman and Dehaghani offer kal