Criminal Justice Institutions Research Articles

Ensuring Human Rights in Criminal Proceedings in the Context of a Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has put a number of legal issues on the agenda of the world community – how to ensure the rule of law in the face of the need to save the lives and health of many people, how to achieve a reasonable balance in the ratio of various human rights in a pandemic situation, how to determine the criteria for proportionality of restrictions on essential human rights. The criminal justice authorities and courts have a serious task to ensure human rights, achieve the effectiveness of criminal proceedings and access to justice in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, on the one hand, and take the necessary measures to ensure the safety of persons involved in criminal proceedings, including their own, from the threat of COVID-19 infection, on the other. Measures that restrict human rights in the context of a pandemic must be implemented in accordance with the principles of the rule of law, respect for human rights, the rule of law, legal certainty and proportionality. Proportionality can be established by determining a reasonable balance of private and public interests in each particular situation, through an assessment of the affected interests in terms of their significance. In General terms, the rights and freedoms that provide the most significant benefits are given priority. The criteria for determining a reasonable balance between private and public interests and for resolving an emerging conflict of human rights are determined taking into account the immediate circumstances of the case (the epidemiological situation, the state of health of participants in the process, the urgency and significance of the proceedings for participants in criminal proceedings and the interests of justice, the ability to ensure the necessary sanitary and epidemiological requirements). The coronavirus pandemic has put on the agenda the issue of creating a strategy for the transformation of criminal justice institutions in emergency situations, when the normal mode of criminal proceedings is impossible due to objective reasons.

No longer a ‘collateral consequence’: Imprisonment and the reframing of citizenship

This article examines the impact of imprisonment on citizenship. It identifies how civil, political and social rights are circumscribed with a sentence of imprisonment, and scrutinizes to what extent citizenship is limited for prisoners. Drawing on recent developments in England and Wales, it contends that citizenship has been eroded, not as a ‘collateral consequence’ of imprisonment, but rather as a determined penal policy. The boundaries of punishment have become blurred, moving from criminal justice institutions, and extending towards what is termed civil and political penality. Finally, it argues that, because citizenship in prison is inevitably framed around the differences between freedom and captivity, prisoners respond to the constraints of imprisonment through alternative ways of expressing their citizenship.

Introduction: Le champ pénal et ses hybridations « en actes »

L’introduction de ce dossier retrace les principaux clivages, ambivalences et formes d’hybridations qui traversent et modèlent le champ pénal en Suisse et à l’échelle internationale. Le texte invite ainsi à interroger les rapports entre État pénal et État social, entre punition, réhabilitation et gestion des risques, ou encore entre prison et alternatives à l’incarcération : comment ces dimensions a priori distinctes se combinent-elles empiriquement, constituant de fait un « continuum sociopénal » ? La pertinence théorique du concept d’hybridation pour la compréhension du champ pénal, ainsi que les outils méthodologiques utiles à son exploration sont ensuite discutés. Enfin, sont détaillées trois formes d’hybridation, qui dialoguent avec les contributions composant ce dossier : la première forme se donne à voir lorsque deux institutions poursuivant des missions distinctes sont amenées à collaborer pour prendre en charge un même public ; la deuxième émerge lorsqu’au sein d’un même dispositif institutionnel deux paradigmes d’intervention se font concurrence et entremêlent leurs logiques d’action; la troisième forme d’hybridation peut s’observer lorsqu’on prend pour objet d’analyse les trajectoires des publics soumis au champ pénal, elles-mêmes marquées par la diversité des dispositifs de prise en charge (sociale, judiciaire ou encore thérapeutique).

The Criminal Case Processing of Foreign Nationals in the Netherlands

Abstract Foreign nationals are increasingly encountering the criminal justice institutions of many European countries. Yet, basic questions about how they are punished within these institutions, particularly at the early stages of case processing, remain unanswered. This article combines linked case information from arrest through sentencing with interviews of Dutch judges and prosecutors to fill this gap. Our findings reveal considerable unexplained citizenship disparities in multiple case outcomes. Compared to Dutch citizens arrested for the same crimes and with similar criminal records, foreign nationals are more likely to have their cases referred to court, to be detained, convicted, and imprisoned. The interviews identified several mechanisms that explicate these differences, including (i) annoyance when foreign nationals are perceived to be in the country for the purpose of committing crime; (ii) logistical issues when noncitizens do not have a permanent residence, and; (iii) undermining the need for reintegration because many defendants are unlikely to remain in the Netherlands.

Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico

How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mexican prison population and leveraging the date and place of arrest, this paper provides causal evidence about how these two explanatory variables shape police brutality. Our paper offers a grim picture of the survival of authoritarian policing practices in democracies. It also provides novel evidence of the extent to which the abolition of inquisitorial criminal justice institutions—a remnant of colonial legacies and a common trend in the region—has worked to restrain police brutality.

Sanctifying the expansion of carceral control: Spiritual Supervision in the religious lives of criminalized Latinas

Drawing from ethnographic data and interviews collected in a Latina/o Pentecostal organization based in Northern California’s Bay Area, this paper analyzes how a religious street ministry that offers rehabilitation services and spiritual aid to criminalized individuals enacts spiritual supervision. Spiritual supervision refers to the process by which religious organizations incentivize middle-class individuals to participate in the construction of a criminalized class of individuals, as part of how they practice their Christian identities. This article analyzes how middle-class congregants supervise the actions and behaviors of criminalized individuals who perform gendered physical labor and participate in public dramatizations of their criminal stigma in exchange for housing, food, and religious participation. Spiritual supervision provides a novel theoretical framework for analyzing how carceral state power spreads through the institutional missions and practices of institutions that aim to rehabilitate but also reinforce racialized, gendered, and classed hierarchies that further stigmatize and control criminalized people. As a less visible form of punishment imposed outside formal criminal justice institutions, spiritual supervision illuminates how carceral control operates and affects spiritual and religious landscapes.

Reducing Criminal Justice Involvement of Individuals Experiencing Homelessness and Mental Illness: Perspectives of Frontline Practitioners

Individuals experiencing both homelessness and mental illness have high rates of interaction with public safety and criminal justice institutions. Several cross-sector diversion programs have been developed over the past decades as alternatives to incarceration. Most of these initiatives rely on the commitment and expertise of frontline practitioners from different sectors and backgrounds. This research examines the perspectives of frontline practitioners regarding practices and policies that target justice involvement of individuals experiencing both homelessness and mental health issues in a Canadian urban context. Findings from focus groups with 55 participants drawn from the police, the community and public health and social services sectors indicate that frontline practitioners value and support close proximity in cross-sector action, while raising ethical and legal issues related to this type of practice. Participants also describe how exclusion from services for this population, lack of involvement from corrections, housing, and forensic mental health services, and ineffective use of involuntary treatment mechanisms shape and constrain frontline practice. The findings of this article give voice to the specific concerns of frontline service providers. Given these findings, we suggest potential strategies to better serve individuals who are identified as “harder to serve” but who might also benefit from diversion from the criminal justice system.

Technologies of Crime Prediction: The Reception of Algorithms in Policing and Criminal Courts.

The number of predictive technologies used in the U.S. criminal justice system is on the rise. Yet there is little research to date on the reception of algorithms in criminal justice institutions. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted within a large urban police department and a midsized criminal court to assess the impact of predictive technologies at different stages of the criminal justice process. We first show that similar arguments are mobilized to justify the adoption of predictive algorithms in law enforcement and criminal courts. In both cases, algorithms are described as more objective and efficient than humans' discretionary judgment. We then study how predictive algorithms are used, documenting similar processes of professional resistance among law enforcement and legal professionals. In both cases, resentment toward predictive algorithms is fueled by fears of deskilling and heightened managerial surveillance. Two practical strategies of resistance emerge: foot-dragging and data obfuscation. We conclude by discussing how predictive technologies do not replace, but rather displace discretion to less visible-and therefore less accountable-areas within organizations, a shift which has important implications for inequality and the administration of justice in the age of big data.

Crime victims’ rights commissioners: public interest entities in a regulatory regime

ABSTRACT The legal force of crime victims’ rights is ambiguous: are they service standards or legal rights? This question has created confusion about the nature of compliance and bifurcates the enforcement mechanism as administrative or legal. Regulatory analysis creates a wider lens to this debate. In this article, we conceive victims’ rights charters as part of a regulatory regime designed to influence the conduct of state agencies in discharging their functions. Rights compliance and enforcement as a regulatory challenge provides a framework for systematic analysis of regulatory instruments, tools and strategies chosen by key actors. We use a case study of statutory crime victims' rights commissioners in Australia to illustrate the implications of these choices. We suggest that clearer articulation of the techniques of compliance show the coexistence of administrative and legal sanctioning. Our argument turns attention to the duties imposed on public institutions of criminal justice and their accountability.

Putting Babies First: Supportive Choices for Mother and Baby Units

Babies have been living in prisons for centuries and yet there is a dearth of literature which examines their conditions. The first known baby in prison was Henry Kable Junior (born in Norwich Castle Gaol (England) in February 1786), he lived with his mother in Norwich Castle Gaol until he and his parents were all transported to Australia. The problem persists that babies are living within prisons. Mother and baby units are presented as a solution; however, these living arrangements are not always in the best interests of children. There are no internationally consistent conditions, agreement on the age of separation or discussion about the possible choices for those who are supporting infants living in mother and baby units. It is difficult to conceive that there could be any other way of dealing with women who have young babies and it is this difficulty that has led to the creation and longevity of mother and baby units.The first section of this article provides an overview of the most salient representations of babies in prison during the current year and its COVID-19 pandemic. I will explain how a theory called, ‘supportive choices’, can be applied by prison administrations, criminal justice institutions and activists. Encouraging supportive choices is an original theoretical framework to explain that rather than re-writing legislation a first step would be that the ‘best interests of the child’ should be used as a justification for change. Inevitably a theoretical framework will have problems when translated into practice, however the intention is to provide a starting point for the transformation of policies or practices that have the intended (or unintended) consequence of putting the interests of women before their babies.

Crime Victims’ Rights Commissioners: Public Interest Entities in a Regulatory Regime

The legal force of crime victims’ rights is ambiguous: are they service standards or legal rights? This question has created confusion about the nature of compliance and bifurcates the enforcement mechanism as administrative or legal. Regulatory analysis creates a wider lens to this debate. In this article, we conceive victims’ rights charters as part of a regulatory regime designed to influence the conduct of state agencies in discharging their functions. Rights compliance and enforcement as a regulatory challenge provides a framework for systematic analysis of regulatory instruments, tools and strategies chosen by key actors. We use a case study of statutory Australian crime victims’ rights commissioners to illustrate the implications of these choices. We suggest that clearer articulation of the techniques of compliance show the coexistence of administrative and legal sanctioning. Our argument turns attention to the duties imposed on public institutions of criminal justice and their accountability.

How Does Punishment Affect Reintegration of Former Offenders? Evidence from Iraq

How does variation in the severity of punishment affect public opinion toward the reintegration of former nonviolent offenders? We study this question in the context of Iraq, where the United States has been heavily involved in the design and development of criminal justice institutions since overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in 2003. Building upon extensive fieldwork and interviews in Iraq, we designed a survey experiment—a method developed in the social sciences but not yet widely used by legal scholars—that randomly varied the severity of sentences in hypothetical scenarios of nonviolent Islamic State “collaborators” (e.g. cleaners, cooks, and wives of fighters) to estimate the causal effects of punishment on attitudes toward reintegration. We find that a long prison sentence (15 years) does not increase the likelihood of participants’ willingness to allow the reintegration of former offenders, but a noncarceral punishment (community service) has a small but statistically significant positive effect. Our most striking finding is that noncarceral and community-based justice mechanisms can significantly increase the likelihood of successful reintegration after punishment. Fifteen percent of respondents who were initially opposed to the return of former offenders into their communities said that they would be willing to change their judgment and support reintegration if they were asked to do so by a tribal or religious leader, or if the offender completes a noncarceral rehabilitation program. These findings suggest that noncarceral, restorative, and community-based justice mechanisms may be equally or even more effective than long-term incarceration for achieving the objectives of rehabilitation and eventual reintegration of former nonviolent offenders. Our study also advances the field of comparative empirical legal scholarship by providing an innovative experimental research design that can be replicated by scholars studying other contexts including the United States to help answer important questions about the causal effects of criminal justice policies.

Prevention of Dangerous Acts of Persons with Mental Disorders: Organization, Statistics, Trends

Dangerous and violent acts of mentally disordered persons that pose a threat to the health and lives of people around them frequently attract the media attention and become a subject of public debates. Prevention of such actions is one of the most important tasks of the psychiatric care system. This article describes the organization of psychiatric prevention at federal and regional levels, involving all medical organizations that provide outpatient and inpatient psychiatric care. The primary focus is on forensic psychiatric prevention of dangerous behavior of the mentally ill. One of the forms of preventive measures is active dispensary observation of patients prone to dangerous acts due to their mental condition. This observation is carried out by medical organizations together with the internal affairs’ agencies. However, the key issue of forensic psychiatric prevention is the execution of the compulsory medical measures imposed by the court and provided for by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Besides, the measures aimed at preventing repeat crimes also include psychiatric care of convicts as a separate branch of forensic psychiatric prevention. The authors present the data of ten-year monitoring of medical services that make it possible to assess the scope, main directions and effectiveness of prevention. This investigation uses the data from the state statistical reports for the Russian Federation and the subjects of the Russian Federation from 2008 to 2017. On this basis, the authors identify the trends in prevention of the dangerous acts of mentally disordered offenders in the psychiatric care system and formulate the main directions for the improvement. In this connection, the authors pay special attention to the use of standardized risk assessment tools to predict dangerous behavior of the mentally ill as one of the ways to increase the effectiveness of psychiatric prevention. Such tools are widely used in foreign forensic psychiatric practice, as well as in criminal justice institutions. The authors describe principal methodological approaches to the development of such tools in foreign and domestic research. According to the authors, the use of such techniques for the risk assessment of dangerous behavior in mentally disordered persons and the development of individual medical and rehabilitation plans on their basis would expand the possibilities for forensic psychiatric prevention.

Punitiveness Beyond Criminal Justice: Punishable and Punitive Subjects in an Era of Prevention, Anti-Migration and Austerity

AbstractThis article advances a holistic conceptualization of punitiveness that acknowledges its complexity and contemporary social and political pervasiveness. We argue that punitiveness is best understood as a phenomenological complex operating at a personal, symbolic, political and structural level, which borrows from, but extrapolates the confines of criminal justice institutions. The article examines limitations in articulations of punitiveness in criminological scholarship, and then draws on three contemporary case studies to investigate how the political deployment of anxieties and hostilities around the ‘crises’ of prevention, anti-migration and austerity reveal and reproduce punitive logics. It then outlines an original conceptual framework to argue that punitiveness ultimately revolves around the construction of, and dynamics between, punitive and punishable subjects.

Wading in Troubled Waters: Supporting the Work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) through Domestic Legal Institutions in Kenya

This article discusses the role of Kenyan domestic legal institutions in supporting principles and institutions of international criminal justice. It discusses how these legal institutions have interacted, supported and even applied the principles of international criminal justice amidst a very hostile political climate. This article argues that the current calls for withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court may be frustrated by these institutions because they have greater affinity to the principles of international criminal justice than political establishments. While acknowledging that the eradication of impunity should be a joint effort between domestic and international institutions and that the current tensions and calls for withdrawal are not good for everyone, the article argues that neither international institutions alone nor domestic systems can make progress unless there is collaboration as well as reforms in the entire international criminal justice system.

“This Is Shared Work:” Negotiating Boundaries in a Social Service Intermediary Organization

This article discusses the results from our fieldwork at a social service intermediary organization working to reform criminal justice institutions in a large city in the American South. Our findings focus on organizational staff’s relationships with information and communication technologies (ICTs), both in the course of their daily work of delivering care work to vulnerable participants, as well as the project’s broader political goals to reduce recidivism and repair community relationships with local police. The group needed to distinguish and negotiate the various—and often competing—needs and commitments of the civic actors involved. As on-site researchers, we were asked to design and deploy digital tools to support the organization in exchange for conducting research on organizational uses of technology. This work draws from our time with the group to ask: <em>how might community-based researchers revisit and realign our research methods to better respond to the changing needs and practices of a research site?</em> Our observations identified three recurring technological concerns expressed by staff that pointed to competing agendas and needs within the organization, specifically across different levels of scale: operational, proximal, and temporal. We then discuss these patterns around broader organizational concerns to reflect on how they impacted our own research methods and commitments. Finally, we reflect on the limitations of participatory methods in issue-oriented organizations that do progressive work across multiple scales and agendas.

Evaluating the implementation of a prisoner re-entry initiative for individuals with opioid use and mental health disorders: Application of the consolidated framework for implementation research in a cross-system initiative

Given the interrelated nature of opioid use, criminal justice interaction, and mental health issues, the current opioid crisis has created an urgent need for treatment, including medication assisted treatment, among justice-involved populations. Implementation research plays an important role in improving systems of care and integration of evidence-based practices within and outside of criminal justice institutions. The current study is a formative qualitative evaluation of the implementation of a cross-system (corrections and community-based) opioid use treatment initiative supported by Opioid State Targeted Response (STR) funding. The purpose of the study is to assess the fit of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to a cross-system initiative, and to identify key barriers and facilitators to implementation.The process evaluation showed that adaptability of the clinical model and staff flexibility were critical to implementation. Cultural and procedural differences across correctional facilities and community-based treatment programs required frequent and structured forums for cross-system communication. Challenges related to recruitment and enrollment, staffing, MAT, and data collection were addressed through the collaborative development and continuous review of policies and procedures.This study found CFIR to be a useful framework for understanding implementation uptake and barriers. The framework was particularly valuable in reinforcing the use of implementation research as a means for continuous process improvement. CFIR is a comprehensive and flexible framework that may be adopted in future cross-system evaluations.

Media, crime, and trust in the police in Latin America

This article examines the effect crime is having on support for law enforcement in Latin America. Scholars empirically demonstrate a strong negative effect of crime on support for institutions and satisfaction with democracy. Little empirical work, however, investigates the effect of the media on attitudes toward criminal justice institutions within the Latin American context. We test whether variance in crime salience in the media across countries affects support for the police and the criminal justice system. Analyzing survey data from Latinobarometro and content analysis of newspapers in 14 Latin American countries, we find evidence that increased salience of crime reduces trust in the police across a number of different measures of media coverage.

Trust and Confidence in Media and Criminal Justice Institutions.

In every society, the main purpose of the criminal justice system is to maintain social order and ensure that citizens comply with the law. To do this effectively, the police and court systems need citizen cooperation and obedience, and willingness to assist with criminal investigations and report crimes to the police. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between confidence in the media and confidence in the criminal justice institutions in South Africa. The study tests two objectives: to assess South Africans' level of confidence in the police and courts, and to determine whether citizens' levels of confidence in both the print and televised media will influence their levels of confidence in the police, courts, and in the criminal justice system in general. Utilizing data from the World Values Survey, results reveal a significant and positive relationship between confidence in the media and confidence in the criminal justice institutions. Policy implications of this observation are discussed.

Teaching International Criminal Law from a Contextual Perspective

After a period of overwhelmingly doctrinal research following the establishment of international criminal justice institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s, international criminal law (icl) research has become increasingly self-reflexive and critical. However, the teaching practice of icl seems to have remained focused on a doctrinal analysis of statutes and the jurisprudence of international tribunals. This article discusses a possible way of incorporating the critical turn in icl scholarship into teaching, namely through a contextual perspective. In this perspective, the context of the substance, procedures, objectives, justifications and impacts of the field is foregrounded, instead of being presented as background beyond the scope of analysis. Discussing some of the potential benefits, challenges and downsides of teaching icl contextually, the article concludes that there is merit in adopting and further exploring this approach, among others to educate, and not only to train, the next generation(s) of icl experts.