The Synergistic Effects of Japan’s 2025 Sentence Reduction Bill Revision and Plea-Bargaining System: Social Impact and Institutional Challenges

This report seeks to place criminal justice reforms at the center of ongoing transitional justice debates and discussions in Sri Lanka. The country is eight years on from the end of the war, and in the early stages of its own transitional justice processes. The four mechanisms promised by the Government are either not yet operational (the Office of Missing Persons) or do not yet exist (the truth commission, the special court, and the office for reparations). While everything that is transitional justice related has received much energy and attention, much needed criminal justice reforms have received very little or arguably no attention at all. There is a serious danger that the special court and its prosecutorial mechanism—the primary avenue for criminal accountability for past wrongs—will be conceived in isolation to the existing criminal justice system. However credible, such a mechanism, necessarily temporary and which will address a relatively small number of cases, cannot be a substitute for an entire criminal justice system. The existing criminal justice system must be contended with and it is artificial and dangerous to discuss criminal accountability and the special court without equally considering the failures of the existing criminal justice system and the many aspects of the system that warrant urgent reform. This report highlights the need for developing a comprehensive criminal justice reform agenda that looks at the system holistically and to that end maps out the problem areas and the reforms needed. Alarmingly, however, the Government appears to be adopting a strategy of ad hoc, piecemeal and sporadic criminal justice reforms. This is evidenced by a number of reforms impacting on the criminal justice system either effected or attempted since the transitional justice commitments were made in September 2015. These are discussed in Part 1 of this report. Many of these came to fruition in almost total secrecy and/or are deeply flawed in substance. The haphazard approach to reforms signaled by what has happened to date raises concerns about the reform attempts yet to come. It also raises concerns about whether and how the problems of the criminal justice system—central to ensuring meaningful access to justice for all in the long run—will be addressed. The extent of the problems in the existing criminal justice system have been surveyed and extensive recommendations for reform made by a variety of national and international bodies. Part 2 of this report brings together, thematically grouped, recent recommendations made by the Consultation Task Force, the Special Rapporteurs on torture and the independence of the judiciary, the UN Committees on Torture and the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Violence Against Women. These observations and recommendations highlight the nature of reforms that are necessary, both to overhaul the criminal justice system as a whole and to give meaningful effect to the transitional justice mechanisms themselves.

Toward Successful Postbooking Diversion: What Are the Next Steps?

Criminal Justice in Transition: The Northern Ireland ContextA.‐M. McAlinden and C. Dwyer (Eds.). Oxford: Hart (2015) 386pp. £49.50hb ISBN 978–1849465779

The passage of the First Step Act by the federal government one year ago marked a significant change in the way states approached the issue of criminal justice reform. Some states, like Florida, have been fighting for years to pass reforms, but after the passage of the First Step Act, the momentum for reform helped carry those endeavors through the legislature and to the Governor’s desk. Other more traditionally conservative states, like North Carolina and Arkansas, have now been introducing legislation to address problems within their states’ criminal justice systems by moving towards workable reforms modeled after the federal legislation. The First Step Act provided political cover for right-of-center, state-level lawmakers to address critical issues facing the criminal justice system. Here we discuss the history of the First Step Act and more broadly the trajectory of past criminal justice reforms. After establishing the federal landscape, we aimed to outline the current positions of the states who are engaging in criminal justice reform and how movement on the federal level paved the way for successful legislative outcomes. In our final analysis, we articulate the need to fully implement reforms and provide evidence that even the best of bills, if left unfunded or otherwise incomplete, will fail.

In communities across America today, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Flint, Michigan, too many people—especially young people and people of color—live trapped by the weight of poverty and injustice. They suffer the disparate impact of policies driven by, at best, benign neglect, and at worst, deliberate indifference. And they see how discrimination stacks the deck against them. So today, as we discuss the inequality that pervades our criminal justice system—a defining civil rights challenge of the 21st century—we must also acknowledge the broader inequalities we face in other segments of society. Because discrimination in so many areas—from the classroom, to the workforce, to the marketplace—perpetuates the inequality we see in our justice system. And for those already living paycheck-to-paycheck, a single incident—whether an arrest by the police or a fine by the court—can set off a downward spiral. It can lead to a cycle of profound problems that ruin lives and tear apart families. Problems like losing your health care, your job, your children, or your home. As someone who focuses on civil rights work and criminal justice reform, I see these problems every day. But today in America, I also see a country on the cusp of change. Across a wide range of political perspectives, policymakers and advocates have come together to bridge divides and support meaningful criminal justice reform. And I’m proud to say that this administration—and this Department of Justice—has made criminal justice reform a top priority. We believe that our country needs, and deserves, a criminal justice system that more effectively protects our communities, more fairly treats our people, and more prudently spends our resources. And we believe that no matter how deeply rooted and long-standing the injustices that underlie inequality in our criminal justice system—with clear thinking, hard work and collaboration—we can make real progress.

The interaction between criminal justice systems and basic human rights poses one of the greatest challenges in modern legal approach, especially with regards to safeguarding human dignity into the punitive means. This paper looks at three critical areas in which the working realities of criminal justice often collide with accepted human rights standards: custodial violence/abuses of dignity, prolonged pre-trial detentions and unreasonable delays in the administration of justice, and the death penalty in the context of the right to life. Custodial violence constitutes a serious attack on the inherent dignity of the individuals within criminal justice system. However, cases of torture and physical and psychological intimidation continue to be recorded in prisons across the world despite constitutional protection or other international principles relating to human rights. This tendency erodes the point that human dignity can never be used to remove any human being no matter whether the criminal allegations against them or the fact that they are criminally convicted. The discussion shows that not only does custodial violence denies individual rights, but it alienates the population and undermines the status of the judicial institutions and suffers an institutional brutality syndrome. Another substantial human rights concern is the problem of under trial prisoners and lengthy delays of receiving justice cooked. Unreasonably lengthy pre-trial detention impairs the presumption of guilt and the right to timely trial of a case, presenting the paradox where a person is punished before his or her guilt is proved. Data shows that in most courts, the number of under sentenced suspects is higher than the convicted offenders bringing into perspective the inefficiencies of the system that converts detention into effective punishment. The delays will have a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged groups who cannot provide themselves with decent legal assistance, which further aggravates social inequalities in the justice system. Capital punishment is perhaps one of the most controversial combinations of criminal justice and the rights theme, and questions directly the right to life. The following debates focus on whether the issue of state-sanctioned killing can ever align with human rights, especially with the concerted number of wrongful convictions being recorded as well as the irreversibility of capital punishment execution. The discussion focuses on developing international norms, the elements of arbitrariness in working with death penalty, and the increasing world consensus about abolition. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach in combining a legal analysis, human rights jurisdiction and the empirical data whether these criminal justice practices suit the international human rights norms or not. Findings show that structural reforms towards bringing criminal justice systems in line with human rights obligations need to be put in place, which include more rigour in oversight mechanisms, judicial transformation to speed-up trials and comprehensive back-up to capital punishment. This study finds that sustainable reform of criminal justice must recognize the conflict that exists between these aims of punitive goals and human rights protections. There is a need to deal with the causes of the problems, not with mere incidents, a focus should be put on rehabilitation instead of focusing on retribution, and at the same time, not compromise safety for the population. Representing a growing body of evidence about criminal justice reform, the findings can serve as policy guidance to achieve human rights-conforming criminal justice systems.

This informative book is an update of The Report of the LEAA [Law Enforcement Assistance Administration] Task Force on Women, published in October 1975. It evaluates the 1975 recommendations made on issues that the criminal justice field should examine to ensure that women and girls are treated fairly in the criminal justice system. Female offenders, female crime victims, and female criminal justice professionals remain substantially neglected populations in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Despite the gains made by women since 1975, current evidence shows that: Although the nature and composition of female offenders have changed, the special needs of the burgeoning adult and juvenile offender populations often remain overlooked; Although assistance to crime victims has improved, the need remains for a firm commitment from the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems to change the way these systems respond to women and girls who have been, or potentially could be, victims of crime; Although opportunities for female criminal justice professionals have improved, gender bias and inequality still exist within the criminal justice field and women's progress through the ranks continues to be slow.

The Welsh criminal justice system: On the jagged edge By R.Jones, R.W.Jones, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2022. pp. 292. £24.99 (pbk); £24.99 (ebk). ISBN: 9781786839435; 9781786839442

State Mental Health Policy: Mental Health Transformation: Moving Toward a Public Health, Early-Intervention Approach in Texas

This chapter aims to question the legitimacy of criminal justice systems in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries after their transition to capitalism and democracy. Issues of legitimacy are addressed through critical assessment of trends in crime and crime policy, criminal law reforms, imprisonment, and trust in legal and criminal justice institutions. The introductory section concerns the vast socioeconomic changes introduced with the transition processes in the CEE countries. Besides the transition to a more democratic political regime, non-transparent privatization, the rise of unemployment, extended inequalities accompanied with the lure of consumerism, and other acquirements of transition marked the daybreak of a new era in the second half of the 1980s. Changes in social and value systems also reflected in the trends in crime and criminal justice policies. Their content and legitimacy of the latter will be examined in the second section of the chapter. With increased crime rates, intensified media attention, and rising levels of public fear of crime, criminal justice policies yielded to the populist neoliberal and neoconservative law-and-order solutions for crime, with harsher penalties, lower standards of substantive and procedural rights in criminal justice process, wider powers of the formal social control agencies, and increased numbers of imprisoned population. These processes pushed the criminal justice systems of transition countries towards greater repression and lower levels of legitimacy, and this trend received new impetus after 2008, when the region was affected by the global economic and financial crisis. Two decades after transition, one can argue that the CEE countries experienced the transformation from an illegitimate communist criminal justice system into a democratic model of criminal justice pestered by the crisis of legitimacy.

This study identified characteristics and experiences of arrestees and jail inmates with a serious mental illness that were associated with misdemeanor and felony arrests and additional days in jail. County and statewide criminal justice records and health and social service archival data sets were used to identify inmates with serious mental illness who were in the Pinellas County, Florida, jail between July 1, 2003, and June 30, 2004, and their health and social service contacts from July 1, 2002, to June 10, 2006. Criminal justice and mental health services were recorded longitudinally across 16 quarters, or 90-day periods. Generalized estimating equations for count data were used to describe the associations between individual characteristics and experiences and the risks of misdemeanor and felony arrests and additional days in jail. A total of 3,769 jail inmates (10.1% of all jail inmates) were diagnosed as having a serious mental illness. Participants experienced a mean+/-SD of .90+/-.60 arrest for every three quarters and 10.9+/-23.6 days in jail per quarter that they resided in the county. Being male, being homeless, not having outpatient mental health treatment, and having an involuntary psychiatric evaluation in the previous quarter were independently associated with significantly increased odds of misdemeanor arrests and additional days in jail. On the other hand, being black, being younger than 21 years, having a nonpsychotic diagnosis, and a co-occurring substance use disorder diagnosis were all independently associated with significantly increased odds of felony arrests, and with the exception of having a nonpsychotic diagnosis, they were also significantly associated with additional days in jail. Findings suggest that there are subgroups of individuals with a serious mental illness in the criminal justice system that may require different policy and programmatic responses.

This article examines the incorporation of restorative principles and practices within reforms of Northern Ireland’s youth justice system, adopted following the peace process. It considers whether restorative justice principles can be successfully incorporated into criminal justice reform as part of a process of transitional justice. The article argues that restorative justice principles, when brought within criminal justice, can contribute to the broader process of transitional justice and peace building, particularly in societies where the police and criminal justice system have been entwined in the conflict. In these contexts restorative justice within criminal justice can help civil society to take a stake in the administration and delivery of criminal justice, it can help break down hostility and animosity towards criminal justice and contribute to the development of social justice and civic agency, so enabling civil society to move forward in a transitional environment.

Introduction: Critical Criminology for the 21st Century

Through the rapid modern growth of private security as a form of “internal” policing, and the preference of many large organizations for handling problems “internally” which might previously have b...

Few of the criminal justice system’s problems are new. Indigenous and racialized persons continue to be over-represented in the criminal justice system. Pretrial detention rates have increased significantly during the past 30 years. The criminal law is still used to regulate social problems — poverty, homelessness, and substance use — that it cannot fix. Although law reform happens with some frequency, these underlying problems persist. This article advances a transformative agenda for criminal justice reform. It argues that law reform fails to address three mutually reinforcing features of the criminal justice system that exacerbate its persisting problems. First, reform efforts accord insufficient importance to rehabilitation and reintegration. Second, reform initiatives do not address the growth of police powers that lack adequate transparency and oversight. Third, existing reforms ignore how the justice system increasingly allocates power towards prosecutors and the police, while removing that power from judges. This article’s core argument is that the criminal justice system must be completely transformed in order to address its underlying issues. It contends that meaningful criminal justice reform must take place across four dimensions: (1) substantive criminal law reform; (2) sentencing reform; (3) criminal procedure reform; and (4) institutional reform. It concludes by providing an agenda for criminal justice reform, which includes a set of concrete proposals in each of these four dimensions. Ultimately, this article shows why transformative law reform is necessary to treat individuals with greater dignity, foster rehabilitation and reintegration, and combat the criminal justice system’s worst tendencies.