Justice In Context Research Articles

Of Justice and the Grave: The Role of the Dead in Post-conflict Uganda

In the aftermath of war, survivors’ definitions of justice are often in tension with those of governments and international actors. While post-war northern Uganda has been the site of high-profile prosecutions of Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, our research in rural Acholiland highlights how survivors define justice largely in terms of material compensation for both the living and the dead. These priorities are linked to the omnipresence of improperly buried human remains as evidence of physical and structural violence. Mass graves, burials in former displacement camps, and unidentified remains become focal points around which survivors articulate ongoing socioeconomic suffering and demands for redress. A ‘thanatological approach’ that centres the role of the dead and critically explores the possibilities presented by forensic science in a transitional justice context reveals survivors’ prioritisation of reparative and restorative justice despite the international and national focus on retributive justice through institutions like the icc.

“YEŞİL” YOKSULLUK, ÇEVRESEL ADALET VE SOSYAL HİZMET

19. yüzyılın son çeyreğinde
 profesyonel bir meslek olarak temelleri atılan sosyal hizmet, günümüzde eski ve
 yeni zorluklarla mücadele ederek yoluna devam etmektedir. Yoksullukla mücadele
 başta olmak üzere çocuk istismarı ve çocuk koruma, ruh sağlığı, yaşlı bakımı, engellilerin
 rehabilitasyonu ve sağlık destek hizmetleri gibi alanlar geçmişten bugüne devam
 eden mücadele ve müdahale alanlarını oluşturmaktadır. Ancak bu yüzyılda iklim
 değişikliği, doğal afetler (erozyon, heyelan, kuraklık ve sel nedeniyle göç),
 küresel ısınma, yaşanabilir doğal alanların yok olması, ekilebilir tarım
 alanlarının tahribatını içeren ekolojik krizler mesleğin gündemine yeni mücadele
 ve müdahale alanlarını da dahil etmiştir. Söz konusu ekolojik kriz ve ortaya
 çıkardığı yapısal sorunlar birey, grup ve toplum düzeyindeki ilişkileri
 etkilemesi nedeniyle başta sosyal hizmet olmak üzere pek çok akademik disiplini
 ve mesleği de yakından ilgilendirmektedir. Öte yandan bu çalışmanın çıkış
 noktasında yer alan yoksulluk sorunu, sosyal hizmet alanında en sık karşılaşılan
 toplumsal sorunlardan biridir. Geçmişte yoksulluk sorunu ekonomik temelde ele
 alınırken bugün modernitenin ve küreselleşmenin de etkisiyle insani yoksulluk odağında
 çok boyutlu bir yapı içinde ele alınmaktadır. Bu çalışmada sosyal hizmet bakış
 açısıyla insan türünün bir parçası olduğu doğa ile arasındaki diyaloğa dayalı
 ilişkinin; tahakküm ve hiyerarşiye dayalı monolog bir yapıya dönüşmesi
 sonucunda oluşabilecek birey, grup ve toplum düzeyindeki sorunların neler
 olabileceği irdelenmektedir. Bu çalışmada ayrıca insani yoksulluk, çevresel
 adalet ve hak kavramları ekseninde sosyal hizmetin geçmişi, bugünü ve geleceği de
 ele alınıp tartışılmaktadır. Çalışmanın sonuç bölümünde bu çerçevede sosyal
 hizmet uzmanlarına düşen görev ve sorumluluklar da etik veya hukuki konuların
 ötesinde bir varoluş sorunu olarak ele alınarak ekolojik adalet ve/veya anayasa
 tartışmaları bağlamında değerlendirilmektedir. 

Algorithmic justice: Algorithms and big data in criminal justice settings

The article focuses on big data, algorithmic analytics and machine learning in criminal justice settings, where mathematics is offering a new language for understanding and responding to crime. It shows how these new tools are blurring contemporary regulatory boundaries, undercutting the safeguards built into regulatory regimes, and abolishing subjectivity and case-specific narratives. After presenting the context for ‘algorithmic justice’ and existing research, the article shows how specific uses of big data and algorithms change knowledge production regarding crime. It then examines how a specific understanding of crime and acting upon such knowledge violates established criminal procedure rules. It concludes with a discussion of the socio-political context of algorithmic justice.

Evaluating Urban Odor with Field Olfactometry in Camden, NJ

Odor annoyance negatively impacts residents of communities adjacent to persistent nuisance industries. These residents, often with a high percentage of minority or otherwise marginalized residents, experience subjective and objective impacts on health and well-being; yet, reliable methods for quantifying and categorizing odors have been elusive. Field olfactometry is integral to the study of odor annoyance experienced by communities as it includes both qualitative (human perception) and quantitative (intensity measurement) dimensions of human odor experience and has been employed by municipalities in the U.S. to evaluate odor pollution levels. Cartographic visualization of odor data recorded using a field olfactometer offers further opportunity to evaluate potential patterns of odor annoyance, yet the use of field olfactometry and geographic information systems have not been frequently employed by geographers. By employing a mixed-methods approach to evaluate odor pollution, this study addresses the environmental justice context by quantifying and categorizing the presence of odor pollution in Waterfront South, a neighborhood in Camden, NJ previously identified for its disproportionate malodor burden. This study offers support to mixed methods research and the need for monitoring subjective and objective impacts in communities with compounding odor nuisance industries.

The Spate of Insecurity in Nigeria within the Context of Governance Failure, Justice and Unrest

The discourse expresses great concern on the spate of insecurity in Nigeria within the context of systemic government ineptitude with respect to unrest and justice delivery. It is not disapprovingly debatable that Nigeria polity is dotted with high insecurity, unrest and partiality informed by religious and political brinkmanship which in all truth has inhibited Nigeria’s socio-economic development. The experiences in the Northeast – devastated by Islamic terrorists (Boko Haram), Niger Delta Agengers in the South-south region (destroying oil pipelines), the herdsmen conundrum in the middle belt of Nigeria, signals Nigeria’s precariousness. However, the paper concludes that, notwithstanding the maladies, if justice is served and vexed questions of unemployment, food insecurity and general welfare provision are answered, Nigeria would be a better place.

Critical Health Communication Methods at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Violence Against Migrant Women and the Role of Health Activism

This essay re/envisions what critical health communication methods look like on the U.S.-Mexico border in reproductive justice contexts. For example, traditional health communication theories and methods have privileged objectivity, generalizability, and the creation of critically important health communication patterns and concepts that have guided the development, deployment, and execution of health communication programs and cultural competence programs. However, in this article, we discuss the utility and application of an intersectional/critical health communication reproductive justice method and envision its praxis in contexts like the U.S.-Mexico border. As two Chicana feminist reproductive justice/health communication scholars, our own research on reproductive feminicides throughout the U.S. and Latin America has necessitated the blending of a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches--border theories, intersectionality, Chicana feminisms, and health communication theories and methods. Thus, this essay traces the blending of these theories and methods and discusses how critical intersectional feminist health communication methods can be utilized in activist ways to resist reproductive and gendered violence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Re-engineering justice? Robot judges, computerised courts and (semi) automated legal decision-making

AbstractThis paper takes a sceptical look at the possibility of advanced computer technology replacing judges. Looking first at the example of alternative dispute resolution, where considerable progress has been made in developing tools to assist parties to come to agreement, attention then shifts to evaluating a number of other algorithmic instruments in a criminal justice context. The possibility of human judges being fully replaced within the courtroom strictu sensu is examined, and the various elements of the judicial role that need to be reproduced are considered. Drawing upon understandings of the legal process as an essentially socially determined activity, the paper sounds a note of caution about the capacity of algorithmic approaches to ever fully penetrate this socio-legal milieu and reproduce the activity of judging, properly understood. Finally, the possibilities and dangers of semi-automated justice are reviewed. The risks of seeing this approach as avoiding the recognised problems of fully automated decision-making are highlighted, and attention is directed towards the problems that remain when an algorithmic frame of reference is admitted into the human process of judging.

Introduction: queer(y)ing justice

The lives of sexuality- and gender-diverse people around the world have, in recent years, changed dramatically. In some regions, political campaigns for social, criminal, and legal justice have been characterised by increasing visibility and popular support, coupled with the removal of social inequalities and discrimination. However, in other regions, repression and discrimination have remained stable or even increased, and social gains have been promptly followed by conservative backlash. After the achievement of marriage equality, for example, this backlash took the form of a Religious Freedom Review, which has sought to protect the religious ‘freedom’ to discriminate against sexuality- and gender-diverse people. In the United States of America, too, the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality was followed, not too long afterwards, with a ban on transgender people entering the military among other indicators of reducing acceptance of sexuality and gender diversity (GLAAD 2018). The field of Queer Criminology has recently emerged – led by scholars in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia – as a way of enhancing and evaluating efforts to address the inequalities and discrimination faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the criminal justice context (Buist and Lenning 2016; Peterson and Panfil 2014; Dwyer, Ball, and Crofts 2016). In a short period of time this field has grown significantly, drawing together a previously disparate set of critical studies in attempts to illuminate aspects of the criminal justice experience for LGBTQ people, and to correct criminology’s historical assumption that LGBTQ people – if, in fact, it even considered them at all – were inherently deviant. This rapid growth of queer criminological research has seen the field develop in many directions, such that it not only includes an ever-expanding array of empirical studies into policing (Dwyer 2015; Miles-Johnson 2013; Colvin 2012), imprisonment (Simpson et al. 2016), and crime victimisation (Asquith and Fox 2016), but also includes important theoretical developments debating issues such as the most productive directions for the field, or how ‘queer’ might be defined and used in criminology (Ball 2016).

Fairness, accountability and transparency: notes on algorithmic decision-making in criminal justice

AbstractOver the last few years, legal scholars, policy-makers, activists and others have generated a vast and rapidly expanding literature concerning the ethical ramifications of using artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and predictive software in criminal justice contexts. These concerns can be clustered under the headings of fairness, accountability and transparency. First, can we trust technology to be fair, especially given that the data on which the technology is based are biased in various ways? Second, whom can we blame if the technology goes wrong, as it inevitably will on occasion? Finally, does it matter if we do not know how an algorithm works or, relatedly, cannot understand how it reached its decision? I argue that, while these are serious concerns, they are not irresolvable. More importantly, the very same concerns of fairness, accountability and transparency apply, with even greater urgency, to existing modes of decision-making in criminal justice. The question, hence, is comparative: can algorithmic modes of decision-making improve upon the status quo in criminal justice? There is unlikely to be a categorical answer to this question, although there are some reasons for cautious optimism.

Technologies in the Twilight Zone: Early Lie Detectors, Machine Learning and Reformist Legal Realism

Contemporary discussions and disagreements about the deployment of machine learning, especially in criminal justice contexts, have no foreseeable end. Developers, practitioners and regulators could however usefully look back one hundred years to the similar arguments made when polygraph machines were first introduced in the United States. While polygraph devices and machine learning operate in distinctly different ways, at their heart, they both attempt to predict something about a person based on how others have behaved. This paper, through an historical perspective, examines the history of the polygraph within the justice system – both in courts and during criminal investigations - and draws parallels to today’s discussion. It can be argued that the promotion of lie detectors supported a reforming legal realist approach, something that continues today in the debates over the deployment of machine learning where ‘public good’ aims are in play, and raises questions around how key principles of the rule of law can best be upheld. Finally, this paper will propose a number of regulatory solutions informed by the early lie detector experience.

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s Mutual Trust Journey in EU Criminal Law: From a Presumption to (Room for) Rebuttal

AbstractMore than any other EU institution, the Court of Justice of the European Union has upheld the presumption of mutual trust in EU criminal law cooperation. Surprisingly though, despite mutual trust’s centrality in the Court’s jurisprudence, it has long not qualified nor properly elaborated the notion of trust, but rather held on to its presumed existence based on a high level of fundamental rights protection throughout the Union. This article will assess the important role of the Court in establishing, upholding and ultimately qualifying the trust presumption in the EU criminal justice context. Along the lines of a number of key cases, the narrative of a strong defence of (the presumption of) mutual trust appears, but also of an evolution toward more room for rebuttal in recent cases. This signals the increased weight given to fundamental rights protection in the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.

Psychological Contract Fulfillment on Employees Reactions within the Context of Organizational Justice

Aim - The objective of the study was to examine the psychological contract expectations by employees and the impact of any deviation from its perceived benefits by the employees of an organization, as they occur within social exchange relationships to account for employee responses. 
 Methodology - This is an exploratory longitudinal study in which an investigation is made into the changes in employment obligations as perceived by employees based on the level of fulfillment of contract obligations by their employer(s). 
 Findings - It was deduced that an employer's inability to fulfill its contractual commitments was the foundational cause associated with the decline in cooperation of the employees to fulfill their employment obligations. 
 Significance - The results of the current study show that there is a significant and positive relationship between Psychological Contract Fulfilment and Employee Reaction. Results presented that there is a significant and positive relationship between Organizational Justice and Employee Reaction. Results presented that there is a significant and positive relationship between Organizational Justice and Psychological Contract Fulfilment.

Occupational Therapy and Criminal Court Mental Health Initiatives: An Important Emerging Practice Setting

Occupational therapy is well equipped to help people with mental illness in criminal justice contexts. Criminal court mental health initiatives, meanwhile, have emerged as a “rehabilitative response” to disproportionate numbers of people with mental illness caught in the criminal justice system. These initiatives—namely, mental health courts and mental health diversion—belong to a family of problem-solving courts animated by the theoretical concept of therapeutic jurisprudence. Occupational therapy is on the periphery of these developments, but this article argues that the growing emergence of these initiatives presents an important and expanding new area of practice for occupational therapy.

Wrongful Convictions and the State Risk Harm Paradigm

What has been seen in the last thirty-five years is a significant shift in the psyche of contemporary society. Beck’s theory of “risk society” has captured the concerns of governments and its institutions to focus fears on risks and insecurity. Within the criminal justice context, this has led to the pervasive consciousness that crime has become part of the everyday experience to be controlled by risk management techniques framed within Foucault’s concept of “governmentality.” Crime has become a ubiquitous risk that must be routinely assessed and managed. This shift in criminological thought has also been seen in the move away from the liberal ideals of due process to the favoring of public protection over the rights of individuals found within the normative model of crime control. The problem in this devaluation of due process is the consequent imbalance of power between the individual and the State. Due process rights are enshrined in the Charter to protect against this imbalance and are never more important than when loss of liberty is at stake, most particularly when the errors due to the constriction of these rights contribute to the acknowledged systemic factors that lead to wrongful convictions.

Reconciling after Transitional Justice: When Prosecutions are not Enough, the Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract The concept and study of transitional justice has grown exponentially over the last decades. Since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after the end of the Second World War, there have been a number of attempts made across the globe to achieve justice for human rights violations (International Peace Institute 2013: 10). How these attempts at achieving justice impact whether or not societies reconcile, continues to be one of the key discussions taking place in a transitional justice discourse. One particular context where this debate continues to rage on is in Bosnia and Herzegovina, many scholars argue that the transitional justice process and mechanism employed in Bosnia and Herzegovina have not fostered inter-group reconciliation, but in fact caused more divisions. To this end, this article explores the context of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina from a unique perspective that focuses on the need for reconciliation and healing after transitional justice processes like war crime prosecutions. This article explores why the prosecuting of war criminals has not fostered reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and how the processes have divided Bosnian society further. Additionally, this article presents the idea of state-sponsored dialog sessions as a way of dealing with the past and moving beyond the divisions of retributive justice.

Contextualizing the nature of trauma in the juvenile justice trajectories of girls

The proportion of girls involved in the juvenile justice system has steadily increased over the last few decades. Previous research has indicated that the presence of girls in the juvenile justice system is often linked to trauma and violence, and the subsequent criminalization of behaviors associated with traumatic experiences. The present study examined qualitative interview data from juvenile court officers (n = 24) in a mid-sized juvenile county court to review the types and extent of trauma experienced by girls and the connection of trauma to juvenile justice trajectories. A secondary goal of the study was to determine the current level of access to trauma-informed care for female youth and how equipped juvenile court are to manage and provide trauma-related services. Results indicated that girls experience high rates of family violence, neglect, emotional trauma, and sexual abuse. Juvenile court officers described how these events were often connected to their pathways into the justice system; however, there was less discussion of trauma-specific care for girls. These perceptions and explanations of traumatic events directly shape prevention, intervention, and policy responses by the justice system. This study raises concerns related to how researchers and practitioners can shift the focus from trauma as an individual-level deficit to an ecological understanding of trauma and the integration of trauma-informed practice in juvenile justice contexts.

Role of employee felt obligation and endorsement of the just world hypothesis: A social exchange theory investigation in an organizational justice context

AbstractAccording to social exchange theory, felt obligation after being treated justly is key to explaining why justice perceptions influence behaviors important to organizations, such as task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Perhaps those who believe in a just world (Just World Hypothesis, JWH) are more likely to feel obligated to reciprocate just treatment with behaviors benefiting the organization. Thus, our goal was to investigate whether belief in the JWH influences to what extent people feel obligated after being treated justly and the importance of felt obligation in regard to behavioral outcomes, such as OCB and task performance. Based on 160 university alumni and their supervisors, results provide support that justice perceptions can relate to both job performance and OCB via felt obligation, providing empirical support for the theoretical role of felt obligation in the social exchange theory explanation of how justice perceptions can translate into employee behaviors benefiting the organization. Results also suggest that endorsement of the JWH interacts with procedural and distributive justice perceptions, but not interpersonal justice perceptions, to influence felt obligation and that the indirect effect of distributive and procedural justice perceptions on both OCB and task performance via felt obligation is only significant for individuals with relatively high levels of endorsement of the JWH. Implications are discussed.

A framework for assessing political will in transitional justice contexts

ABSTRACTPolitical will is commonly recognised as being fundamental to policy-making processes surrounding accountability for serious human rights abuses in transitional justice contexts. In practice, however, it is an elusive and complex phenomenon which is difficult to operationally define and measure. This paper considers the unique characteristics and challenges of political will in transitional justice contexts, and outlines a framework by which political will for accountability can be systematically defined and measured. The framework proposes five key dimensions for measurement: initiation, assessment, mobilisation, allocation, and enforcement. Taken together, the five dimensions operationalise the measurement of political will, defined as the type and level of actions that demonstrate continual commitment by an actor/actors for a set of accountability objectives that aim to end impunity for human rights abuses. The framework is a contribution to the growing movement towards empirical methods of human rights assessment, and a step towards quantifying an elusive but critical concept.

Environmental Justice Context for Sustainable Development

Abstract The background context of environmental justice is essential information to sustainable development in situ. The actual implementation of sustainable development goals requires adoption of...

Using Graph Talks to Engage Undergraduates in Conversations Around Social Justice

We present a mathematical activity called graph talks as a new pedagogical routine to intertwine social justice issues and mathematics. Adapted from number talks, graph talks involve students analyzing, interpreting, and discussing real-life data represented in graphs. Graphs may be strategically selected to both highlight a relevant social justice issue while also reinforcing the mathematics content of the course. We report on experiences using graph talks in undergraduate mathematics content courses for future teachers in the USA, and provide examples of the undergraduates doing mathematics while analyzing the social justice context of the graphs.