Ordinary Criminals Research Articles

Financial regulation and supervision after 11th September, 2001

Discusses in a wideranging way the background to official regulation of markets, going back to 17th century Britain’s outlawing of stock‐jobbing, and the “blue sky” frauds in 19th/20th century USA; however, policy has generally been to avoid heavy‐handed interference as counter‐productive. Assesses how far this approach has changed in recent years and the chances of success for attacking terrorism through money laundering control. Moves on to the long history of economically motivated crime, corruption, smuggling and trafficking, and the impact of technology. Reviews finally the techniques of money laundering, relating it to the evasion of sanctions and embargoes, and the attempts to counter it and pursue the proceeds of crime, stressing the differences between terrorists and ordinary criminals.

Rebel with a Cause? Terrorists and Humanitarian Law

This article suggests that international law has great difficulty in deciding whether terrorists should be treated as ordinary criminals or as political actors. This ambivalence is visible in treaties on the law of war, as well as in instruments dealing more straightforwardly with terrorism, and is traceable (at least in part) to an ambivalence about politics in general. Still, even if the law does not give clear‐cut answers, there are sound reasons for treating terrorists in a humane manner.

Criminal Justice in a Divided Society: Northern Ireland Prisons

Many societies are divided on political, ethnic, religious, national, or linguistic lines; criminal justice systems require strategies to manage the consequences of the resulting conflict and political violence. The prison system in Northern Ireland provides a case study of three contrasting methods of managing divided and politically motivated prisoners. "Reactive containment" is a military-style response of suppression combined with negotiation that treats inmates as prisoners of war. "Criminalization" denies political legitimacy to the practitioners of violence by imposing the symbols and regimes appropriate to ordinary criminals. "Normalization" treats division and a certain level of violence as commonplace, seeks to minimize conflict within the prisons, engages constructively with politically motivated prisoners, and holds the greatest promise for managing political violence without being an obstacle to political progress.

Exploratory notes on criminality and emotional ambivalence

In most social and behavioral science theories, depictions of ordinary criminals tend to ignore the emotional states of offenders and the possible relationship between emotionality and criminal behavior. Theorists who do consider emotions tend to presume that crime is motivated by subconscious desires to remove guilt by being punished. This paper challenges this presumption using evidence from life-history data on criminal careers. We argue that the failure to consider the emotions of offenders leads to simplistic explanations of criminal behavior. Ordinary property offenders actually experience a great deal of emotional ambivalence concerning crime. By ambivalence we mean that despite appearent social and emotional satisfactions gained from crime, most offenders experience guilt or an enduring sense of shame.

Who is the Psychopath? A Rejoinder and a Comment

In response to an article in this journal by another contributor, a modest attempt is made in the present paper to put forward additional perspectives concerning the classification and aetiology of psychopathy. An attempt is made also to distinguish between ‘essential’ psychopathy and ordinary recidivist criminality. Finally, some observations are made concerning the question of treatment.

A follow-up study of criminal psychopaths.

One of the most important questions in dealing with psychopaths is the prognosis. In 1948 two of us made a study (Stafford-Clark, Pond, Lovett-Doust, 1951) of a number of criminal psychopaths and a control group of ordinary criminals in prison by clinical and EEG methods, with the object of revealing the characteristics which most significantly distinguished psychopaths from others, and which were, therefore, most crucial in diagnosis. The psychopaths were carefully chosen in collaboration with two experienced prison medical officers. The later criminal behaviour of these psychopaths and controls is equally interesting, however, if we are to understand what the diagnosis implies (Gibbens, 1951). The third author (T.C.N.G.) has therefore been conducting a continuous follow-up, with the collaboration of the Prison Commission and Criminal Records Office. The results of the first follow-up, from 1948–1953, have been published (Gibbens, Pond and Stafford-Clark, 1955), and were reproduced in the transactions of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness (1957). The present paper deals with a further period of study, so that the follow-up is now from 1948-June, 1957.

A Re-Examination of the Validity of Our Sex Psychopath Statutes in the Light of Recent Appeal Cases and Experience

Under the tradition of our Anglo-American legal and criminal system, we have in marked contrast differentiated the handling of ordinary criminals from psychotic and feeble-minded offenders. We have maintained two separate and distinct sets of procedures for these groups, employing civil methods of commitments for the latter. Originally there arose a widespread conviction that in the general, over-all field of delinquency there was a special class designated as defective delinquents who should not be sent to ordinary prisons but who should receive special handling adapted to meet their peculiar needs. And historically, society has quite early recognized that its interests might best be protected through administering medical treatment as opposed to imprisonment for insane criminal offenders. A striking aspect of this type of procedure is that the commitments are for indeterminate lengths of time. Parole or complete freedom is given only upon the reestablishment of sufficient control and mental stability. This is diametrically opposed to the mode of handling the criminal. In that case we have felt it important that a maximum period be set for sentence in accordance with the seriousness of the crime or the dangerousness of the offender. Throughout the years another exception has crept into criminal procedure in the defense of insanity, the case of the irresistible impulse. This is a radical extension of the same theory inasmuch as the offender is considered not insane. Most recently, however, still another extension of this concept has been made in affording similar treatment to sane criminal sex offenders who are found to be what has been loosely characterized as sexual psychopaths. Up to this time we have avoided granting any exception to neurotics or psychopaths on the ground that they know what they are doing and if they so desired could control their behavior. However, because the spotlight of public attention has focused in recent times on several brutal sex crimes involving children, a great clamor has arisen for the suppression and control of these atrocities. It is quite easy to under-