International Journal of Law Crime and Justice最新文献

Magistrates' courts are the workhorses of English and Welsh criminal process. Efficient processing of high caseloads in these courts depends on a cohesive network of co-operation among the parties. That co-operation depends on a culture of perceived informality among courtroom personnel, whilst proceedings are actually subject to nuanced uses of legal and procedural provisions. Those nuances are obscured by the seemingly informal way that the workgroup operates to keep magistrates’ courts functioning so that they can manage high volume caseloads.

Here I argue that the veil of informality that falls over magistrates' court proceedings undermines defendants' abilities to participate in proceedings. Data gathered through observation of magistrates’ court proceedings and follow up interviews with lawyers highlighted that the courtroom workgroup operates as a network perpetuating co-operative behaviours. That data suggests defendants cannot properly participate because a strong culture of workgroup co-operation both informalises the proceedings and obscures their complexity.

Through a framework that combines literature's observations on traffickers' policy-based representations with International Relations (IR) theories, this paper explores the representations of traffickers and anti-trafficking government goals in policies of the United Kingdom's (UK), Scottish and Northern Irish governments. Policies were found to mostly subscribe to a Realist's viewing of human trafficking, emphasising criminal choices. Still, and despite their growing tendency to focus on a wider range of traffickers, their dominant narrative tends to revolve around trafficking stereotypes, often ignoring the full spectrum of traffickers' identities to promote total human trafficking elimination. This discourse may overstate Britain's trafficking problem, sustaining state legitimacy and intervention and narrowing down the scope of anti-trafficking efforts. Conclusively, to ensure a more effective anti-trafficking response, the UK needs to set more feasible goals and based on an in-depth knowledge of traffickers strive to further enrich the policy-promoted human trafficking narrative.

While extensive studies have identified the influence of social perception and victims' self-blame as factors responsible for underreporting of rape, fewer studies have explored victims' interaction with police officers and possible impacts this could have on victims' reporting behavior. Therefore, this study explores rape victims’ interaction with officers of the Nigerian Police in the course of seeking justice. Twenty-seven victims of rape who interacted with police and six key informants working in women advocacy groups were interviewed in a qualitative study. Findings indicated that participants perceived police officers to have engaged in victim-blaming, slut-shaming, lack of empathy, refusal to cooperate with counsel, and delaying investigative processes. Evidence from the study suggests that police officers manifest influence from social stereotypes and rape scripts in their perception of rape victims. The study suggests the deployment of a special anti-sexual violence unit within the police, consisting of well-trained and skilled personnel in sexual crimes.

It is now well recognised that victims of sexual offences may recount events differently at different times and to different audiences and that variations, gaps or ‘inconsistencies’ are not necessarily indicative of lying or unreliability. Incorporating this knowledge into the criminal trial now forms part of the wider reform agenda in a number of jurisdictions, including via recommended jury directions. This is now expressly reflected in provisions like s 54D of the Jury Directions Act 2015 (Vic) – introduced in 2017 – which provides for an educative direction on how the jury should (and should not) consider differences in the complainant's account. Drawing on rare access to sexual offence trial transcripts, this article reports on the findings of an analysis of 33 rape trials finalised in the County Court of Victoria between 2013 and 2020. We found that complainants were still regularly cross-examined, and the quality of their evidence challenged, on the basis of differences in their accounts. We found little evidence that the availability of a jury direction has shifted the defence practice of evoking the ‘lying complainant’ by pointing to ‘inconsistences’ in their evidence.

This paper addresses the relative lack of studies concerning characterisation of online crime in court judgements. The goal was to outline the social context of computer-dependent online offences in Lithuania as enacted in court practice. It is an internationally relevant example of the applied outcomes of local legislation enacting the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. We focused on four key themes to explore how computer-dependent online crime was defined in court practice: offences, offenders, victims, and sentences, bound by the concept of selectivity in criminal justice. A mixed-methods approach was utilised to analyse 265 court judgements in online offence cases in Lithuania from the years 2017–2021. The results revealed that the majority of the offences were computer-enabled rather than computer-dependent, carried out by persons with previous experience in the criminal justice system seeking financial gain.

Public agencies in the criminal justice system (i.e., law enforcement agencies, the courts, and the corrections) need legitimacy for their survival. According to system theory, the functions performed by one system agency can exert significant influences on the others. Therefore, the effect of perceived legitimacy is supposed to intertwine with different agencies. Yet, the current literature on the impact of perceived legitimacy primarily focuses on one single agency - law enforcement in Western studies. Using longitudinal data collected in China from 514 juvenile offenders in a juvenile correctional facility for males, the present study employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the interconnections of perceived legitimacy across the three agencies. Findings derived from the current study suggest that the perceived legitimacy of one agency had a significant effect on the subsequent agencies. However, the influence was dynamic and temporary.

Many countries worldwide are facing social change as they are increasingly becoming multicultural societies. South Korea has maintained a homogeneous ethnic identity for a long time but is experiencing an immense inflow of foreign residents. This study empirically examines the effects of foreign residents on crime. The employment permit system is adopted as an instrumental variable to seek a causal link. We found that increasing the number of foreign residents in the total population is positively related to the incidence of crime. The number of arrests also increases with the crime incidence, and we found little significant change in the ratio of arrests to crimes. Moreover, the increase in crimes falls largely within the category of violent crimes rather than felonies, property crimes, and intellectual crimes. Based on the results, we suggest that the government needs to promote a multicultural and accommodating culture and enable immigrants to settle stably in Korean society.

Police tactical units are the elite law enforcement teams tasked with handling the most dangerous and confrontational missions within the police force. However, little is known about who these officers are, how they are recruited, and how they perceive their role as an instrument of violence. Based on ethnographic observation and 23 semi-structured field interviews, this study reveals key features of the Chinese police tactical units by conducting sociological and psychological inquiries into the identities of these officers and how they deal with moral conflicts under overlapping social identities both as ruthless enforcers of the law and as members of society.

The job satisfaction of staff is vital for the effective functioning of any organization. Many studies have been conducted that examine the job satisfaction of correctional officers, though mostly in Western nations. To examine job satisfaction in a cross-cultural setting, this study uses survey data from a sample of 163 correctional officers in a prison in the State of Haryana, India. We examine how job demands (perceived dangerousness of the job and role overload) and job resources (instrumental communication, job autonomy, quality supervision, and job variety) affect job satisfaction. The results indicate that all four job resource variables had significant positive associations with job satisfaction, while neither job demand variable was significantly related to job satisfaction. The implications of the study for policy are also discussed.