Acceptance Of Punishment Research Articles

Haste Makes Waste: Why China's New Plea Leniency System is Doomed to Fail

AbstractIn 2016, China introduced an ‘Admission of Guilt and Acceptance of Punishment’ system (known as ‘plea leniency’) premised primarily on the ideal of punishing crime efficiently while advancing the protection of human rights. In this article, I challenge this official rationale by critically examining the legitimacy of plea leniency as a rights-based approach to crime. Drawing on procedural justice theory, I use extant research data and online criminal judgments from the courts in Shanghai to unravel manifold mismatches between the plea leniency process and a procedurally just decision-making process that respects individual rights. My contention is that the operational dynamics of plea leniency is weighed heavily towards efficacy with little regard for the fundamental norms of due process and fairness in which the procedural legitimacy of this new form of summary dispositions is grounded. By tying the expedition of criminal proceedings to guilty pleas, plea leniency represents a discursive continuity of China's broader criminal justice culture, and as such, it fails in operating on a more just, respectful, and communicative basis to accommodate defendants’ interests which stand at the core of its operation.

Dialectical analysis of amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law of China in 2018

The amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law in China in 2018 mainly involves enhancing the system for leniency based on admission of guilt and acceptance of punishment, increasing the procedure of fast-track sentencing, improving the convergence norm between the Criminal Procedure Law and the Supervision Law, and adding the procedure for trial in absentia. These improvements and additions have positive implications for the implementation of a criminal policy of leniency and strictness, for realization of the diversion of complex situations and simple situations in the proceedings, for deepening the reform of the state’s supervisory system, for realizing the people’s procuratorate’s effective performance of legal supervision, and power and for effectively punishing crimes of corruption. However, there are limitations in the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law in 2018. In the future, the amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law can adopt both the comprehensive amendment of the National People’s Congress and the partial amendment of its Standing Committee, so as to promote the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law in a timely and comprehensive manner. In terms of the amendment’s content, the judicial reform results and coordination between laws should be fully considered. New regulations for the new law should be clear and enforceable. In regard to law implementation, there should be sufficient time for implementation preparation after the promulgation of the new law.

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by the famous Swiss literary scholar Emil Staiger and to present it to Ukrainian explorers for the first time. Due to the complex application of the historical-cultural, comparative, descriptive methods, the methods of linguistic-stylistic and figurative analysis, the authentic change of the traditional angle of interpretation has been identified: it eliminates the motif of the ancestral curse based on the Theban cycle of myths and shifts the emphasis on personal guilt. It is established that Staiger departs from the traditional explanation of category ??????? as �error� and interprets it as a deep cause of offense, which lies within ourselves, but is devoid of malice, which weighs all the consequences and pursues a specific goal. A �plastic Greek� perceives his guilt as destiny, and destiny differs from conscious activity. It is noted that the researcher distinguishes the work of Sophocles from a number of �tragedies of fate�, recognizing the oracle as a core element of dramatic tension creation. Moreover, the oracle is not interpreted as a symbol of blind reign of eternal fate, but only as a sign of infinite divine knowledge. Thus, the central conflict of the tragedy is the antagonism between Apollo and Oedipus, the god and the mortal: it is not a matter of showing that everything on earth is predetermined, but of distinguishing between infallible knowledge of god and limited knowledge of man and illustrating the gap between man and god. �Know thyself!� � know that you are a human, not a god � this famous aphorism can be considered the idea of tragedy, and Oedipus is the embodiment of the finiteness of human knowledge. It is stated that due to the motive of the court the whole tragedy is perceived as a model of Staiger�s dramatic style (observability of the action, brief description of the characters, conciseness of language). It is notable that the role of judge takes the protagonist himself and he finds the criminal in himself. So the movement returns to its starting point: the circle composition in �Oedipus the King� becomes a loop that is tightened around the neck of the hero. The interpreter names it �tragic irony�, which permeates the semantic outline of the work (especially the double meaning of the words of the characters) and it is manifested in each plot (the man himself fulfils the prophecy, trying hard to divert it). Staiger`s distinctive interpretation of the problem of freedom is emphasized: no matter how deceived Oedipus goes, he comes to admit his guilt and realize the need for punishment, and in the choice of punishment lies his freedom. Ultimately, Oedipus must be defeated in order to preserve the truth of the divine word. However, wilful acceptance of punishment is not a reconciliation of freedom (the hero fought against his fate) and necessity (he lost the fight against fate) in the classical sense, but rather it is related to the tragic emotions, which cause admiration.

EM DEFESA DA CIDADANIA: A DESOBEDIÊNCIA CIVIL COMO CAUSA SUPRALEGAL DE EXCLUSÃO DA CULPABILIDADE

O presente estudo tem por objetivo analisar a possibilidade de a desobediência civil, enquanto espécie do direito de resistência, atuar como causa de exclusão da culpabilidade na seara penal, em razão da inexigibilidade de conduta diversa por parte dos agentes desobedientes. Por meio do método dedutivo, a partir da análise de dados qualitativos, a pesquisa inicia investigando a teoria da desobediência civil, reconstruindo sua legitimidade histórica e constitucional, explorando também duas características que lhe são geralmente atribuídas: não violência e aceitação voluntária das sanções. Em seguida, analisam-se as nuances da culpabilidade na área criminal e a ação desobediente como uma dirimente supralegal, capaz de afastar a responsabilidade penal do agente desobediente. Conclui-se, ao final, que a desobediência civil pode ser considerada como causa de exclusão da culpabilidade, em determinados casos, pois não se pode exigir uma conduta diversa do agente desobediente que empenha esforços pela efetivação ou defesa de um direito, o que nada mais é que o exercício pleno da cidadania.

Whistleblowing as civil disobedience

The media hoop-la about Edward Snowden has obscured a less flashy yet more vital – and philosophically relevant – part of the story, namely the moral and political seriousness with which he acted to make the hitherto covert scope and scale of NSA surveillance public knowledge. Here I argue that we should interpret Snowden’s actions as meeting most of the demanding tests outlined in sophisticated political thinking about civil disobedience. Like Thoreau, Gandhi, King and countless other (forgotten) grass-roots activists, Snowden has in fact articulated a powerful defense of why he was morally obligated to engage in politically motivated law-breaking. He has also undertaken impressive efforts to explain how his actions are distinguishable from ordinary criminality, and why they need not culminate in reckless lawlessness. In fact, his example can perhaps help us advance liberal and democratic ideas about civil disobedience. First, it highlights sound reasons why, pace the orthodox view, the acceptance of punishment by those engaging in civil disobedience should not be seen as a precondition of its legitimacy. Second, Snowden reminds us that ours is an era in which intensified globalization processes directly shape every feature of political existence. Defenders of civil disobedience need to update their reflections accordingly.

Situationally Equivocal Eyewitness Evidence and the Violence of Crimes

AbstractEyewitness evidence is amongst the most important types of evidence in investigative and juridical proceedings. Yet, eyewitness evidence frequently derives from observations made under situationally equivocal conditions, including such factors as darkness and physical obstruction of view. The effect of the violence of a given crime on potential jurors' evaluation of such equivocal evidence was addressed. A witness's identification of a suspect in a violent crime was generated in three versions, varying only in the level of violence of the crime. Respondents were more likely to accept this identification as accurate under more violent conditions and were also less likely to report noticing or considering equivocal aspects (darkness and physical obstruction) in situations of greater violence. Predisposing factors to judgement of guilt lay significantly in the acceptance of punishment as a viable deterrent to crime and of societal guilt for the criminal's behaviour, although political or religious orientations were not shown to influence these results, and none of these factors interacted with the violence of the crime to influence judgement of guilt or innocence. These findings indicate the importance of affective factors in judgements of guilt or innocence, especially when these judgements are based on situationally equivocal eyewitness evidence. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Behavior of mother rats in conflict tests sensitive to antianxiety agents.

Previous studies of freezing and open-field activity have demonstrated that lactating rats are less fearful or less anxious than nonpregnant ones. The purpose of this investigation was to observe the behavior of mother rats in conflict tests, which are frequently used in studies on the neurobiology of anxiety. In the punished drinking test, in which licking from a water spout is punished by electric shocks, mothers (observed on Day 1 postpartum following 24 hr of water deprivation) were found to drink more than virgins. Mothers (Day 1 postpartum) also consumed more food than controls in an unfamiliar open field. In contrast, no difference between mothers (Day 5 postpartum) and virgins was present in the exploration of an electrified shock probe. The largest maternal anticonflict effects in the drinking and feeding tests were recorded when the females were tested with their pups. Increased punished drinking was also observed in virgin rats treated with the anxiolytic benzodiazepine midazolam. Water-deprived virgins and mothers did not differ in the shock titration test, a result suggesting that diminished pain reactivity was unlikely to account for the increased punished drinking in mothers. Moreover, females in late pregnancy, which are hypoalgesic (Gintzler, 1980), did not lick more than virgins in the punished drinking test. Following 24 hr of water deprivation, unpunished drinking was higher in lactating females than in virgins, so the increased acceptance of punishment by mothers might have been due to their being more thirsty than virgins.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Acceptance of punishment and change in belief.

Abstract : Subjects were asked to indicate whether or not they were receiving ESP messages, which were presumably sent for 12 successive transmissions. Half the subjects received shock when they indicated nonreception. It was predicted that shock would introduce conflict and 'nonreceivers' who accepted this shock would experience dissonance. This dissonance might be reduced by rejecting belief in ESP. A high latency of response for females indicated that they did indeed show this conflict, and these subjects did reduce their beliefs in ESP significantly more than did the other subjects. Nonshocked females and males in both conditions showed little conflict and less change in belief. (Author)