scholarly journals The Natural Meaning of Crime and Punishment: Denying and Affirming Freedom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Chelsom Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
True Crime ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe article discusses the link between freedom, crime and punishment. According to some theorists, crime does not only cause a person to have less freedom; it constitutes, in and of itself, a breach of the freedom of others. Punishment does not only cause people to have more freedom, for instance by preventing crimes; it constitutes, in and of itself, respect for mutual freedom. If the latter claims are true, crime and punishment must have certain meanings that make them denials/affirmations of freedom irrespective of their consequences. My aim is to show that such an immanent connection between crime/punishment and freedom exists. I do so by explicating the “natural meaning” of crime and punishment. This way of addressing the topic is inspired by Jean Hampton’s use of H. P. Grice’s concept of natural meaning. Expanding on Hampton’s theory, drawing on both H. L. A. Hart and Kant, I argue that crime has the natural meaning of denying freedom, and punishment has the natural meaning of affirming freedom. The paper presents an ideal theory, not a justification for actual criminal justice practices, which in most countries unfortunately fail to instantiate the value of mutual freedom.

Why and How We Need to Fill Criminal Justice Data Gaps

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 259-261
Author(s):  
Arthur Rizer ◽  
Dan King
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Data Storage ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Data Gaps ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Silver Bullet

For the past 50 plus years the United States has been debating the very nature of our criminal justice system. Are we too lenient? Are we too vindictive? Do we give too much power to our cops and prosecutors or too many protections to defendants? But maybe most important, is there a better way? Can we ensure we have both safety and dignity built into our system? These questions are extremely difficult for law makers to answer because of the moral implications involved with crime and punishment, but also because of one glaring weakness: data sharing and reporting. We simply do not have comprehensive data collection systems for policy makers to draw on to design interventions that can protect public safety and help heal community wounds. While there is no silver bullet that will fix these problems, we believe attention should be paid to: 1) fixing inconsistencies in key terms so data collection can be universal, 2) fixing the issues with delayed reporting so the data we have is up to date for researchers and policy makers, and 3) addressing issues with inadequate and inconsistent data storage so not only will the data be available but assessable to those who can use it to improve the system.

27. Critical perspectives on crime and punishment

Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Case ◽  
Phil Johnson ◽  
David Manlow ◽  
Roger Smith ◽  
Kate Williams
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Community Justice ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
Control Theories

This chapter examines a range of perspectives which question the assumptions underlying the concept of ‘punishment’. It first explains what is meant by the idea of critical perspectives on punishment before discussing a number of critical perspectives on the justice system including abolitionism, social control theories, community justice, and transformative justice. It then explores unjust punishment and problems for criminal justice of discrimination and inequality, focusing on the disparities in treatment between white, BME, and other sectors of the population in the criminal justice system. It also considers how ‘crimes of the privileged’ and state crimes can remain unseen or unpunished and concludes with an evaluation of the limitations of critical analyses of crime and punishment.

Criminal justice in the middlebrow imagination: The punitive dimensions of Making a Murderer

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel LaChance ◽  
Paul Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Crime And Punishment

Popular documentary representations of crime and punishment have traditionally tended to fall into two camps: programs that are critical of law enforcement agencies and those that are sympathetic to them. In this article, we show how programs that present themselves as critical of legal authorities can nonetheless reinforce the “law and order punitivism” that underlay the ratcheting up of harsh punishment in the late 20th century. In a case study of the popular documentary miniseries Making a Murderer, we show how this can happen when texts fetishize the question of a criminal defendant’s innocence, adopt a “good versus evil” approach to players in the criminal justice system, and perpetuate a procedural rather than substantive vision of justice. Arguments are supported by a close reading of Making a Murderer and illustrated by a line of discussion it inspired in an internet forum.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychosocial Processes ◽  
Desistance From Crime ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Crime Causation ◽  
Do So

Criminology has pursued a long-standing interest in crime causation and what leads individuals into committing crime. It is striking, though, considering the extent to which state machineries are marshalled into efforts to control and reduce crime, that criminologists have only relatively recently turned their attention to the question of what prompts offenders to cease criminal activity and how they do so. Consequently, and perhaps making up for lost time, the past two decades have seen a proliferation of literature exploring the psychosocial processes of change. Recent research has also opened questions about the impact of social contexts and criminal justice interventions on desistance from crime, examining the way that individuals transform aspects of identity and social relationships as they move away from offending (for example, ...

scholarly journals What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Yardley ◽  
Adam George Thomas Lynes ◽  
David Wilson ◽  
Emma Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Wound Culture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
True Crime

This article explores websleuthing, a phenomenon widely discussed and debated in popular culture but little-researched by criminologists. Drawing upon a review of existing literature and analysis of news media representations, we argue that websleuthing is much more diverse than previously thought. Encompassing a wide range of motives, manifestations, activities, networked spaces and cases, websleuthing has a variety of impacts upon victims, secondary victims, suspects, criminal justice organisations and websleuths themselves. We conclude that websleuthing is the embodiment of true crime infotainment in a ‘wound culture’ (Seltzer, 2007, 2008) and as such, is deserving of more criminological scrutiny than has been the case to date.

Reducing the Harm of Criminal Victimization: The Role of Restitution

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy Hoskins Haynes ◽  
Alison C. Cares ◽  
R. Barry Ruback
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Compensatory Mechanism ◽  
Court Order ◽  
Interpersonal Justice ◽  
Criminal Victimization ◽  
Do So

Restitution is a court-ordered payment by offenders to their victims to cover the victims’ economic losses resulting from the crime. These losses can be substantial and can harm victims and victims’ families both directly and indirectly. But most victims do not receive reparation for their injuries, both because judges do not always impose restitution and because of problems with collecting restitution payments, even if there is a court order to do so. In this article, we review the literature on restitution and suggest that this compensatory mechanism is necessary to restore victims to where they were before the crime occurred. But monetary restitution alone is not sufficient. Making victims whole requires not only financial compensation from the offender but also procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice from the criminal justice system.

Whitewashing Criminal Justice in Canada: Preventing Research through Data Suppression

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Millar ◽  
Akwasi Owusu-Bempah
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Police Organizations ◽  
Canadian Law ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Do So

Race and racism have long played an important role in Canadian law and continue to do so. However, conducting research on race and criminal justice in Canada is difficult given the lack of readily available data that include information about race. We show that data on the race of victims and accused persons are being suppressed by police organizations in Canada and argue that suppression of race prevents quantitative anti-racism research while not preventing the use of these data by the police for racial profiling. We also argue that when powerful institutions, such as the police, have knowledge that they keep secret or refuse to discover, it serves the interests of those institutions at the expense of the public. Fears that reporting of racial data will result in racial profiling or the stigmatization of racialized communities are not assuaged by the repression of this information. Stigmatization may still occur, and racial profiling can continue to happen, but without public knowledge. Quantitative anti-racist research requires consistent, institutionalized reporting of race data through all aspects of Canadian justice. We outline what data are available, what data are needed, and where consistency is lacking. It is argued that institutional preferences for white-washed data, with race and ethnicity removed, should be subrogated to transparency.

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