Culpability Of Offender Research Articles

Criminal Law and its Victim-Oriented Development: an Academic Inquiry

In the 21st century, one of the essential roles of the Criminal Code is to protect the rights and interests of crime victims. Criminal law is a complex field that must balance established principles with evolving societal dynamics. This involves various stakeholders, including the state, perpetrators, victims, and civil society, each with differing views on criminal law. The modern era, marked by post-truth narratives and a reputational society, has further complicated matters. Casuistry now prevails over systematic approaches, leading to a disconnect between criminal law’s foundational principles and intended societal outcomes. Contemporary criminal law operates on multiple dimensions, addressing individual, societal, and institutional levels while aiming to balance the interests of these entities. The transition from the “age of information” to the “age of reputation” underscores the importance of information subjected to external evaluation. In the context of harmonizing Ukrainian criminal legislation with EU and Council of Europe norms, it is vital to protect human rights. This aligns with a Committee of Ministers recommendation that recognizes crime as a wrong against society and a violation of individual rights, emphasizing the importance of safeguarding victim rights. Approaching criminal law from a victimological perspective offers unique insights into victim participation in criminal liability, crime qualification, and offender culpability. This perspective encourages assessing the efficacy of criminal law prohibitions and promoting victim engagement in crime control.

Testing the Drugs’ Sentencing Guidelines: A Comparison between England and Wales and Hong Kong

AbstractIn the era of sentencing guidelines, the punishment for traffickers is primarily based on the offenders’ culpability and the drug weight. Existing literature tend to focus on the issue of proportionality as it relates to the roles and culpability of offenders. However, little attention has been drawn to the quantity of drugs. England and Wales have incorporated offender roles into their sentencing guidelines, while Hong Kong uses drug tariffs strictly based on drug weight to calculate the starting point of a sentence. Using a novel equation called ‘the arithmetic starting point of sentence’, this study examines the starting sentence based on each gram of drugs by undertaking a comparative analysis of the respective jurisdictions. The results show that both jurisdictions have adopted sentencing guidelines that exhibit a logarithmic curve. This implies that the scale used to measure the quantity of drugs is disproportionate, penalising smaller quantities more harshly than larger quantities.

Conceptualization of the Penology System under Islamic Criminal Law

Islam propounds a culture where everybody follows the rules. Islam aims to preserve peace and tranquillity within the society and thus takes all required legal action to ensure the community against disruptive elements. The notion of retribution in Islam is not the primary law of Islam. They are only imposed as a requirement or series and a vindication of the primary structure of Islamic society. Criminal activity within the revered Islamic order of society is not condoned. Islam aims to change the world by changing its human adherents. Shariah law is focused on the individual rights of persons, but those rights only exist within a framework that stresses the rights of other people. Islam is not against the relative culpability of offenders and how circumstances regulate illegal conduct. Islam is the only religion where its laws and regulations are enforced according to a particular set of laws and regulations. Islam uses a system of proportional punishment. Islamic punishments are entirely justified because Islam takes complete steps to deter crime and inculcates offenders' moral conduct. The Islamic Criminal law has accepted several crimes by offering deterrence, reformative, retaliate and other kinds of punishments to uphold harmony in the community and rehabilitate the offenders. This paper focuses on the Islamic penology and the concept of crime and their punishment and explores its social, historical, and current value

Social Roles and Organizational Culture: Attributions of Responsibility and Punitiveness for Financial Crime

A white-collar offender’s role and the organizational culture in which the crime occurs affects subjective evaluations of offender culpability. However, how they affect responsibility attributions and punitiveness is unclear. We examine attribution processes by conducting a factorial experiment to test a proposed model. We test attribution theory derived predictions using innovative methods of scale creation and nonparametric analyses. Participants attribute more responsibility and are more punitive of individuals and offenders in organizational cultures where illegality is atypical. Our five proposed dimensions of responsibility are predictive of responsibility attributions, and path analysis shows offender role and offense environment affect how the five dimensions of responsibility affect attributions. Our findings have implications for criminal justice and adjudication processes and corporate regulation.

Dousing threats and the criminal law in Queensland: Do we need a new offence?

This article examines dousing threats as criminal conduct and a form of domestic and family violence. It points to recent cases of dousing and highlights concerns that the low penalties of applicable offences in Queensland may not reflect the gravity of the harm caused nor the culpability of offenders. The article analyses the current legal framework and argues that a new dousing offence in Queensland would fill a gap in the criminal law, more accurately label such offending and may also contribute to improved police responses to dousing threats.

The War on Drugs: Moral Panic and Excessive Sentences

The United States’ War on Drugs has not been pretty. Moral panic has repeatedly driven policy when states and the federal government have regulated drugs. Responding to that panic, legislators have authorized severe sentences for drug offenses. By design, Article III gives federal judges independence, in part, to protect fundamental rights against mob rule. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has often failed to protect fundamental rights in times of moral panic. For example, it eroded Fourth Amendment protections during the War on Drugs. Similarly, it failed to protect drug offenders from excessive prison sentences during the War on Drugs. This article examines whether it is time for the Supreme Court to rethink its precedent upholding extremely long sentences for drug crimes. In 1983, in Solem v. Helm, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause applies to terms of imprisonment. There, it found the imposition of a true-life sentence imposed on a repeat offender to be grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the defendant’s offense. Whatever hope Solem created that courts might limit excessive sentences proved to be false. Two Supreme Court cases dealing with drug sentences, bracketing Solem, demonstrate the Court’s unwillingness to override legislatures’ discretion in imposing sentences. In 1982, the Court upheld a 40-year term of imprisonment imposed on an offender who possessed less than nine ounces of marijuana. In 1991, the Court upheld a true-life sentence imposed on an offender who possessed 672 grams of cocaine. The Court’s refusal to curtail such extreme sentences reflects its willingness to accede to the nation’s moral panic over drug usage. Since the height of the War on Drugs, Americans have changed their views about drugs. Significant majorities of Americans favor legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use. Many Americans favor a wholesale rethinking of drug policy. Despite studies in the 1950s and 1960s, demonstrating beneficial use of drugs like LSD and psilocybin, Congress yielded to moral panic and included them in Schedule I when it enacted the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Efforts are afoot at the state level to legalize the study of and to decriminalize the use of those and other drugs. This article argues that the Court should rethink its Eighth Amendment caselaw upholding severe drug sentences. The Court’s Eighth Amendment caselaw balances the severity of punishment against the gravity of an offense. In turn, the gravity of an offense turns on its social harm and the culpability of the offender. The Court upheld extreme drug sentences based on the view that drugs were a national scourge. Moral panic led it to overstate the social harm and the culpability of drug offenders. Scientifically based examination of drugs and drug policy should compel the Court to rethink its excessive punishment caselaw because the balance between severity of punishment and the gravity of drug offenses looks different when one has a better understanding of true costs and benefits of drug use.

Perceptions of victim and offender culpability in non-consensual distribution of intimate images

ABSTRACT This research focused on expanding the limited empirical literature related to perceptions of non-consensual distribution of private sexual images by examining whether the source of the distributed images affects judgments and blame attributions of both victims and offenders. We devised a scenario with male offenders and female victims while manipulating the way in which the misappropriated intimate images were taken (self-taken by the victim vs. stealth-taken). In both conditions and irrespective of the victim's blame, the offender was perceived as highly blameworthy and deserving to be tried and severely punished. Even so, victim-blaming was evident toward a victim whose images were self-taken, and feelings toward the victim affected perceptions of deserved punishment for the offender. Gender differences showed that men significantly blamed the victim more than women and suggested that women's fear of becoming a victim of NCII was greater than men's. The findings support the notion that NCII is no different than other forms of sexual abuse, where female victim-blaming, especially by males, is an established fact.

The Time of Punishment: Proportionality and the Sentencing of Historic Crimes

How does the passage of time affect sentencing? Increasingly, courts around the world are being required to sentence offenders for crimes committed years or even decades earlier. Prevailing conceptions of harm and culpability change over time. Policy makers concerned with punishment and sentencing should be sensitive to changes in the absolute and relative seriousness of crimes as well as the absolute and relative severity of punishments. Ordinal rankings of offenses have evolved over the past 50 years, as has our understanding of the impact of various sanctions. Issues raised by sentencing for crimes committed much earlier illustrate the need for a time-sensitive approach. Should defendants be sentenced according to standards prevailing at the time of the offense or according to current standards? Courts in different jurisdictions have taken different positions on this question. Applying current standards amounts to retroactively re-calibrating the offender's culpability. This essay argues that offenders should be judged by the standards prevailing when they took the decision to offend. A time-sensitive approach would apply the sentencing standards of the earlier time, yet also consider time-relevant mitigation and aggravation in the period since commission of the offense. The offender's conduct and the victim's suffering during the period are both relevant factors. Although the emphasis in this essay is upon proportional sentencing, on any model the offence and the offender should never be treated as a moment in time, caught like an insect in amber. The passage of time often changes our evaluation of the offense and the offender, and when this occurs the nature of the sentence should change. The analysis also extends to long-serving prisoners, whose sentences should be reviewed after years have passed in case they are no longer deemed proportionate.

Pharmacological treatment of sexual offenders in German outpatient treatment centers.

In Germany, depending on a sexual offender's culpability and the severity of the offence, he/she can be placed either in the forensic-psychiatric or the correctional system. Numbers related to the pharmacological treatment of sexual offenders for the correctional system are missing so far. In sexual offenders, the pharmacological treatment of paraphilic disorders is of special importance. The present study aimed at assessing the prevalence of pharmacological sexual offender treatment in German outpatient treatment centers supervising mainly clients from the correctional sector. An online questionnaire was sent to 112 outpatient treatment centers and 21 provided data relevant for the present study. The included institutions reported about a total of 813 sexual offenders, of whom 200 (24.6%) were treated with pharmacological agents, most frequently antipsychotics (14.8%) and selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibitors (7.1%). Of the total sample, 26.7% of sexual offenders were diagnosed with a paraphilic - mainly with a pedophilic - disorder. Only 2% were treated with androgen-deprivation therapy. Compared with forensic-psychiatric institutions, only a minority of sexual offenders are treated with medication specifically addressing paraphilic symptomatology. However, the prevalence of paraphilic disorders found in the present study suggests that pharmacological treatment of paraphilic fantasies and behaviors could be of great importance in the correctional sector as well.

Nursing Students’ Knowledge, Attitudes, Perceived Behavior Control and Intention to Report Cases of Child Abuse

Purpose: This study was designed to explore nursing students’ knowledge, attitudes and intention to report cases of child abuse. Methods: A descriptive research design was used with a convenience sample of 202 nursing students. After explaining the purpose of the study, participants who signed the consent form were asked to complete a self-descriptive questionnaire, which included the Child Abuse Intension Scale (CARIS). Results: The number of correct answers for knowledge of child abuse and the law was 7.0 /13. The mean scores were, for attitude toward childrearing belief and discipline, 17.1±5.2, for punishment and culpability of offender or victim, 24.6±4.1, for professional responsibility, 30.5±5.1, and for perceived behavioral control, 25.3±5.0. The intended reporting behavior differed significantly by severity of abuse. Factors influencing the intention to report child abuse were attitude towards punishment of parents, professional responsibility, and perceived behavioral control (R²=.133). Conclusion: On the basis of our finding, developing education programs to help nursing students detect child abuse and improve reporting rates is important. Thus, we suggests that nursing students be provided with educational protocol for detection and reporting of child abuse.

Operational Constraints of Forensic Evidence in India: Time to Rethink

Administration of criminal justice primarily rests on police, prosecution, courts and prisons. Amongst the functionaries of the criminal justice, the pivotal role is that of the Magistrates and courts. They are responsible for deciding the guilt or otherwise of the alleged offenders and determining the sentence. This process of deciding the culpability of offenders by courts is a complex one involving appreciation of facts and evidence and establishing the charge sought to be proved. In the task, they are assisted by a specialized investigative body, the police. The latter are entrusted with the significant task of detecting and investigating crimes for the purpose of apprehending the alleged offenders and bringing them to justice. In the last few decades, the infusion of technology in crime investigation has been a major breakthrough in the process of advancement of criminal justice. Police utilize scientific tools and techniques to detect a crime, reconstruct the crime scene, identify the alleged offender and establish vital links; the courts, on the other, take account of these physical evidences, otherwise infallible, and determine with enhanced accuracy the innocence or guilt of the offender. Still use of forensic evidence is restrictive in nature. Courts are reluctant to rely upon the evidence. Probable reasons are modern techniques of investigation are an area still unknown to the police. On the other hand, forensic laboratories are staff-starved; resources crunched and lack the desired infrastructural facilities. In addition to these there is lack of co-ordination between these two wings. The Report of the Committee on Draft National Policy on Criminal Justice, 2007 and Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System, 2003 also highlighted on it. India has to overcome all these operational issues to render justice as the ultimate aim is to provide fair and speedy justice.

The General Public is Neutral on “Neurolaw”

Over the last ten years, much has been written about the intersection of neuroscience and law and how it may lead us to re-conceptualize punishment and blame. So for all its promises and controversies, it is interesting that a new study suggests people are “generally neutral in [their] support for neuroscience-based legal reforms” (Shen & Gromet 2015 86). This support, though, is not static, and depending on the frame, wavers along partisan lines. Noting that “political science perspectives have been noticeably absent” in the “neurolaw” literature (87), the authors set out to study how different framings influence public approval. Incorporating their survey into a national omnibus poll (N = 1,010), they offered subjects one of three frames: the first characterized neurolaw as a means for enhancing punishment, the second as a means for diminishing it. (The third was a control). These first two they called prosecution and defense frames, respectively: [Prosecution] “Thinking about how prosecutors may use neuroscientific evidence to show that criminal defendants deserve lengthy prison sentences, do you disapprove or approve of legal reforms based on advances in neuroscience” (92)? [Defense] “Thinking about how defense lawyers may use neuroscientific evidence to show that criminal defendants deserve reduced sentences, do you disapprove or approve of legal reforms based on advances in neuroscience” (92)? What Shen and Gromet found is that while the general attitude toward neurolaw is neutral, “Republicans’ approval of [it] decreases when neuroscience is seen as primarily serving to reduce offender culpability, whereas Democrats’ approval is unaffected by how neurolaw is framed” (86). For scholars and activists this means “the interaction of partisanship and framing can influence approval of neurolaw, particularly with regard to the use of brain science to help defendants receive less severe punishment” (95). This study is not without its weaknesses (some of which they discuss), but most problematic for me is that the poll was conducted in May 2011 – four years ago. Since then there have been a handful of popular science books, documentaries, and focusing events (e.g. the mental health of mass shooters), each of which have likely had some effect on public opinion. My intuition is that, today, the public is less neutral than this study suggests; but if the authors are correct, still, we cannot presume this neutrality will last forever. Within a few years’ time neurolaw may be as politically polarizing as climate change or the teaching of evolution in public schools. And as with those, the framing that prevails will dictate the policies that follow.

Red States, Blue States, and Brain States

Advances in neuroscience are beginning to shape law and public policy, giving rise to the field of “neurolaw.” The impact of neuroscientific evidence on how laws are written and interpreted in practice will depend in part on how neurolaw is understood by the public. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey experiment, this article presents the first evidence on public approval of neurolaw. We find that the public is generally neutral in its support for neuroscience-based legal reforms. However, how neurolaw is framed affects support based on partisanship: Republicans’ approval of neurolaw decreases when neuroscience is seen as primarily serving to reduce offender culpability, whereas Democrats’ approval is unaffected by how neurolaw is framed. These results suggest that both framing and partisanship may shape the future of neuroscience-based reforms in law and policy.

Hate crimes hurt some more than others: implications for the just sentencing of offenders.

An accumulation of research evidence indicates that hate crimes are more serious than similar but otherwise motivated crimes in respect of the greater post-victimization distress for victims. Such evidence has been used by advocates of hate crime laws to justify greater penalties for hate crime offenders. However, in focusing on the commonalities of the post-victimization impacts inflicted by hate crimes, the research evidence to date has obscured the diversity of reactions between victims. Consequently, this article expands the evidence by illuminating the variation in reported victim impacts. The analysis presented uses data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales on racially motivated crime and reveals that not all victims report being affected by hate crime, not all victims are affected the same way, and some victims of racially motivated crime report less of an emotional impact than some victims of equivalent but otherwise motivated crimes. It is reasoned that in any individual case of hate crime the motivating sentiments of the offender provide an unreliable indicator of the harms inflicted on the victim. Therefore, a blanket uplift in penalty in every case which rests on the offender's motivations cannot be justified if the justification for sentence uplift is to give offenders their just deserts for the harms they inflict. Instead, the justification must rest on the culpability of the offender for the harms they may or may not actually inflict. Just as there is variation in victim impacts, there will be variation in offender culpability: Discretion and flexibility in sentencing is therefore necessary to ensure justice for offenders.

Food Safety Offenses in New South Wales, Australia: A Critical Appreciation of Their Complexities.

Food is essentially a primary need of all life to remain alive. Faults or carelessness of human beings renders foods unsafe, which may cause disease and death. This article examines selected food safety offenses of New South Wales aimed at assessing their definitional clarity and penal rationality looking through the lens of an offender's culpability. It carries out a critical analysis based on archival materials and concludes that the present offense provisions hold significant merits to regulate food safety; however, further clarity of their inherent complexities could enhance their efficacy.

Beliefs and expectancies in legal decision making: an introduction to the Special Issue

This introduction describes what the co-editors believe readers can expect in this Special Issue. After beliefs and expectancies are defined, examples of how these constructs influence human thought, feeling, and behavior in legal settings are considered. Brief synopses are provided for the Special Issue papers on beliefs and expectancies regarding alibis, children's testimony behavior, eyewitness testimony, confessions, sexual assault victims, judges' decisions in child protection cases, and attorneys’ beliefs about jurors’ perceptions of juvenile offender culpability. Areas for future research are identified, and readers are encouraged to discover new ways that beliefs and expectancies operate in the legal system.

Attorney and lay beliefs about factors affecting jurors' perceptions of juvenile offender culpability

We surveyed attorneys and college students to learn what factors they believe influence jurors' perceptions of juvenile offender culpability and then varied two of these factors in a simulated case to determine their actual effects on mock jurors' decisions. In Study 1, attorneys (N=30) and undergraduate mock jurors (N=47) believed that a juvenile offender's youthful (versus adult-like) appearance would mitigate jurors' ratings of juvenile culpability. Both groups believed that jurors' perceptions of juvenile crime trends would not have an impact on culpability. In Study 2, undergraduate mock jurors (N=193) read a simulated juvenile case accompanied by a photograph of a youthful versus adult-like defendant. Mock jurors who believed that juvenile crime is increasing were more likely to render guilty verdicts, but their verdicts were not affected by the juvenile's youthful appearance. Mock jurors' sentencing recommendations did not vary as a function of the juvenile's appearance or their perceptions of juvenile crime trends. Psychologists and defense attorneys may wish to emphasize the developmental immaturity of their clients to decrease their culpability to jurors, although it is unclear how large an effect this will have on verdicts and sentencing recommendations in practice.

Emotions Contests and Reflexivity in the News: Examining Discourse on Youth Crime in Canada

The author explores how three Canadian newspapers address appropriate reactions to youth crime during the 1990s. While recent scholarship has emphasized the ways in which moral panics have become more complexly represented within mass media, the author pays attention to how such representational tactics are played out, drawing particular attention to emotional reactions to youth crime. Comparing and contrasting regional and national, as well as tabloid versus broadsheet newspapers, the author draws attention to “emotions contests,” which are closely related to victim contests over young offender culpability and identity. Emotions contests occur where emotional reactions to social problems become, themselves, the source of contention. News reflexivity is a central feature of these articles, whereby references to “the media’s” representational strategies are often espoused through the media themselves. The author suggests areas for advancement of constructionist analyses of emotions discourses in relation to social problems debates.

Proportionality in Sentencing and the Restorative Justice Paradigm: ‘Just Deserts’ for Victims and Defendants Alike?

The doctrine of proportionality seeks to limit arbitrary and capricious punishment in order to ensure that offenders are punished according to their ‘just desert’. In Australian sentencing law, proportionality goes some way toward achieving this ‘balanced’ approach by requiring a court to consider various and often competing interests in formulating a sentence commensurate with offence seriousness and offender culpability. Modification of sentencing law by the introduction of victim impact statements or the requirement that sentencing courts take explicit account of the harm done to the victim and community has generated debate, however, as to the extent to which offenders may be now subject to unjustified, harsher punishments. This article proposes that in order to overcome the controversy of the modification of offender and victim rights in sentencing, sentencing courts adhere to a doctrine of proportionality that is explicitly sensitive to the needs of victims and offenders in a model of restorative justice that focuses on the consequences of crime as against the individual, rather than the state. The extent to which proportionality, as the current constitutive principle of Australian sentencing law, may be modified to better encourage a dialogue between victim and offender is discussed.

Common Law Sentencing of Mentally Impaired Offenders in Australian Courts: A Call for Coherence and Consistency

This article discusses the common law sentencing of mentally impaired offenders in Australian courts. In Part A, the author discusses the significant correlation between mental impairment and crime. In Part B the author considers how courts have used different sentencing purposes (incapacitation, rehabilitation, deterrence, and proportionate retribution) in determining appropriate sentences for this class of offender. The author highlights the inconsistencies that have developed within and between jurisdictions. In Part C the author argues that the inconsistencies have arisen as a result of the theoretically incoherent use of general deterrence, rather than proportionality, as a site for the consideration of diminished offender culpability.