Asian Journal of Criminology最新文献

The present article follows upon a previous one dealing with the discrimination of Arab defendants in Israel. If focuses on the effect of wartime on this discrimination by analyzing the acceptance or rejection of requests on behalf of Jewish compared to Arab defendants to revoke convictions in misdemeanors by Israeli magistrate courts in the past 20 years, as a function of periods of heightened hostilities and the judges’ ethnicity. The findings contradict those of the few and outdated studies conducted in the West, by pointing to the lack of influence of wartime situations, regardless of the judges’ or the defendants’ ethnicity. The conclusion is that particular periods of heightened hostilities do not affect the punitive policy against ethnic minorities in a country that consistently discriminates such minorities and is constantly engaged in war or violent conflict.

Abstract

The age–crime curve has been regarded as a stylized fact of the age–crime relationship. However, recent studies have found that some Asian countries have an age–crime distribution that deviates from the archetypal age–crime curve. This variation has been attributed to cultural factors associated with age effects. Using age-specific arrest data from Korea for the years 1976 through 2019, this study offers a complementary explanation of divergent age–crime patterns across countries. We make an empirical case that the observed difference between the Korean age–crime distribution and the archetypical age–crime curve in Western countries cannot be due to contextual influence on age effects alone. The age–crime relationship in Korea shows both static and dynamic characteristics. The age–period–cohort analysis of variance shows that age effects largely explain the age–crime relationship, but period and cohort effects also explain the change in the age–crime relationship over time. Moreover, the extent to which each effect manifests depends on the type of crime. Based on our findings, we propose hypotheses regarding the role of social context in shaping each effect. We suggest that cultural factors largely shaped age effects by creating age-graded changes in the social control mechanism and in routine activities. In addition, we suggest that other contextual factors, such as population dynamics, simultaneously shaped period and cohort effects by changing the level of social control, and routine activities across birth cohorts. Both cultural and historical dimensions of social context are required to understand divergent age–crime patterns across countries.

Few people convicted of crime have been exonerated in Japan, leading some commentators to claim that the country does not have a problem with wrongful convictions. But this view is mistaken. Japan’s wrongful conviction problem is probably much larger than it appears. Criminal suspects in Japan have a duty to receive interrogation even after they have invoked their right to silence, leading to long and intense questioning that can overbear their will. On average, interrogations in Japan last 30 to 50 times longer than interrogations in the USA. Japan also detains many suspects who do not confess, and restricts their meetings with family and friends, thereby raising the risk of false confession and wrongful conviction. This system of Hostage Justice is enabled by Japanese law and by Japanese courts especially. Japan needs to tame its interrogation practices, which will continue to produce high risks of false confession until its judiciary acknowledges that it is dangerous to permit police and prosecutors to question suspects for dozens or hundreds of hours.

In 1994, China passed its first State Compensation Law (SCL) for wrongfully convicted individuals who can file claims for loss of life or freedom, physical injury, and property loss due to illegal state actions in administrative and criminal cases. The 2010 amended SCL added mental damage compensation and mandated and prioritized a negotiation procedure. The current study used 144 capital exonerees to examine whether and how state compensation was claimed by and/or awarded to these exonerees in China. Our analyses revealed that almost all of the state compensation claims received compensation, and the amount claimed and the amount awarded had increased exponentially over time. In addition, after mental damage compensation was permitted in 2010, capital exonerees had successfully obtained such awards. However, despite of the increased compensation amounts over the years, the winning rates across almost all categories (e.g., mental damage, life/physical injury claims) decreased over time, and the standard of national daily average salary played a more important role on the increased amounts claimed and awarded than the SCL based on results of multivariate analyses. Policy recommendations were discussed to help improve the state compensation system in China.

Wrongful convictions have severe consequences and effects on the values, dignity, and self-esteem of the innocent and their beloved ones. While Vietnam is implementing the rule of law to ensure the protection of citizens’ fundamental rights, recent and serious wrongful conviction cases suggest a need to enhance the effectiveness and credibility of criminal justice reform. Using several cases for examples from Vietnam, this study examines two levels of factors that contribute to wrongful convictions: (i) the acknowledged causes (the top of the iceberg) and (ii) the hidden roots (beneath the surface). In addition, we compare the case of Vietnam to the findings from other Asian nations, notably those of East Asia. We conclude that the causes for wrongful convictions are embedded in the criminal justice process and culture, and eradication of wrongful convictions requires careful planning and innovative reforms that address the root causes of the problems. Relevant policy and practical recommendations are offered to deal with the factors leading to wrongful convictions in Vietnam.

Wrongful convictions (WC) have been widely studied in law and social sciences, yet, previous research lacks a clear conceptualization and rigorous scientific measurement scale to measure stakeholders’ WC perceptions. Given the significance of stakeholders’ perceptions in influencing policy reforms and transforming the criminal justice system, developing such a measurement scale offers an effective tool to comprehensively understand the relationship between WC and criminal justice system errors/misconduct and guide policymaking. In this study, based on samples of multiple stakeholders in Pakistan, we adopted qualitative and quantitative techniques for WC perception scale development and empirical testing. The results indicated that WC in the criminal justice system context consists of six dimensions, including perceptions of errors and misconduct by the police, prosecutor, judiciary, defense attorney, eyewitness, and forensics. The resulting WC perception measurement scale demonstrated an acceptable level of reliability and validity. The WC perception latent construct with the six resultant dimensions was tested with a structural equation model to assess the association of each perceived sub-construct with WC perception. The findings indicated that the legal professionals, policymakers, and the general public tend to believe that the prosecutors’ and police errors and misconduct are the prime reasons for WC in Pakistan. This study also provides theoretical and practical implications for future studies in relevant fields.

Abstract