scholarly journals Pain, Penance, and Protest

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara M. Butler

In medieval England, a defendant who refused to plead to a criminal indictment was sentenced to pressing with weights as a coercive measure. Using peine forte et dure ('strong and hard punishment') as a lens through which to analyse the law and its relationship with Christianity, Butler asks: where do we draw the line between punishment and penance? And, how can pain function as a vehicle for redemption within the common law? Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this book embraces both law and literature. When Christ is on trial before Herod, he refused to plead, his silence signalling denial of the court's authority. England's discontented subjects, from hungry peasant to even King Charles I himself, stood mute before the courts in protest. Bringing together penance, pain and protest, Butler breaks down the mythology surrounding peine forte et dure and examines how it functioned within the medieval criminal justice system.

Author(s):  
Mike McConville ◽  
Luke Marsh

This chapter focuses on how Rules hatched in England which governed police–citizen relations helped shape the justice apparatus of occupied states and the actions of officials administering them. In restructuring the relationship of criminal suspects and police to the criminal justice system, English judges rolled out defective procedures, which remain part of the fixture and fittings of those jurisdictions still burdened by the colonial inheritance. This chapter will reveal how senior judges, whether sitting in the Privy Council in London or reposing in the highest courts of former colonial outposts, continue as legal missionaries proselytizing the common law and overseeing the implementation of rules, discredited and long-discarded back home.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-21
Author(s):  
Gregor Urbas ◽  
Michael Harris

In two decisions handed down in 2016, the High Court of Australia considered legal measures designed to deal with children in the criminal justice system in an age-appropriate manner. The first case, The Queen v GW, was a prosecution appeal involving the unsworn evidence of a child witness. In this decision, the High Court reviewed the common law and statutory background to unsworn evidence, and gave important guidance on the proper approach to dealing with such evidence in proceedings. The second case was RP v The Queen, which involved the criminal responsibility of a child defendant, and in particular the application of the doli incapax presumption. In this decision, the High Court reviewed the common law background to doli incapax, and gave guidance on its application in criminal proceedings. This commentary discusses both cases and the principles underlying the High Court’s reasoning.


Daedalus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-72
Author(s):  
Jonathan Simon

This essay explores the role that U.S. criminal courts play in shaping the uniquely punitive social order of the United States. U.S. courts have long been defined against the common law of England, from which they emerged. In this essay, I consider the English legacy and suggest that while the United States does draw heavily from common-law traditions, it has also innovated to alter them, a process that has established a criminal justice system even more punitive than that of England.


Author(s):  
Armando Saponaro

This chapter outlines the “conflict” and “peace-keeping” victim-oriented justice paradigms. The latter empowers the victims of crime, putting them at the center of an encounter and using interindividual mediation or collective circles to address conflict resolution. Two models are critically discussed in the conflict victim-oriented justice paradigm. The European continental “visible victim” model structures the role of the victim as a full-fledged processual party together with the public prosecutor and offender. In this model, the victim has the same rights and powers of the defendant. The “invisible victim” common law model views the victim as a trial witness, participating, for example, through a victim impact statement (in the United States) or victim personal statement (in the United Kingdom) at the sentencing stage. The visible victim conflict paradigm model enhances a victim's role and involvement in the criminal justice system, offering a solution to existing controversial and critical common law system issues.


Author(s):  
Keesha M. Middlemass

Convicted and Condemned is a critical assessment of how a felony conviction operates as an integral part of prisoner reentry. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework and ethnographic data, the book advances knowledge about the connection among politics, racial animosity, history, public policies, and a felony conviction, which is rooted in historical notions of infamy and the political system of white supremacy. By applying social disability theory to the way a felony conviction functions outside of the criminal justice system, this book explores the evolution of a felony conviction, the common understanding of it, and the way it became shorthand for criminality and deviance specifically linked to black skin. On the basis of social practices, politicians took the common understanding of a felony conviction and extended its function beyond the boundaries of the criminal justice system so that a felony conviction is now embedded in policies that deny felons access to public housing, educational grants, and employment opportunities. Unique ethnographic and interview data reveal that because felons no longer can be physically exiled to faraway lands, a form of internal exile is performed when a felony conviction intersects with public policies, resulting in contemporary outlaws. The book argues that the punitive discourse around a felony conviction allows for the extension of the carceral state beyond the penitentiary to create socially disabled felons, and that the understanding of who and what a felon is shapes societal actions, reinforces the color line, and is a contributing factor undermining felons’ ability to reenter society successfully.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 90-101
Author(s):  
Camilla Magalhães Gomes

The purpose of this article is to investigate how decolonial studies can contribute to an agenda of southern criminology and in particular, but not exclusively, to our research on gender and gender violence. To do so, the path chosen was to first present the common lines between these ways of theorising. Then, the entanglements of race and capitalism and of race and gender in the decolonial perspective are presented. With this done, it is possible to think about how decoloniality and punishment are related and to, from then on, think of a decolonial agenda for criminology that involves taking the colonial hypothesis seriously and always thinking and seeking to listen, read and research the ways of resistance from those dehumanised by the criminal justice system.


Author(s):  
David Baxter Bakibinga

The concepts of prosecutorial independence, discretion and strategy are considered the cornerstones of an effective and efficient criminal justice system under common law. To this end the state of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas amended its national constitution and established an independent office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP). The ODPP must have appropriate policy-legal and organizational frameworks to enable it enhance its independence from the office of the Attorney General (AG). This paper explores how the constitutional framework promotes the independence of the ODPP Bahamas and any claw backs. A comparison is made with other independent ODPPs such as Uganda. The last part of the paper examines strategies adopted by ODPP Bahamas that are meant to enhance prosecutorial independence and discretion.


1969 ◽  
pp. 299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julianne Parfett

The common law has historically defined self- incrimination narrowly. Using Packer's models of the criminal justice system as a framework, the article examines the Supreme Court of Canada's interpretations of s. 24(2) of the Charter. The Court has expanded the definitions of both self incrimination and remoteness. The author argues that s. 24(2) has ceased to be a remedy requiring the balancing of interests and has become a quasi- automatic rule of exclusion, which promotes individual rights at the cost of victim's rights. Further, in the Court's zeal to protect the integrity of the system, there is no allowance made for the seriousness of the breach, the consequences of the exclusion, or the causal connection between the breach and any evidence obtained. The author argues that this has resulted in a justice system more concerned with police behaviour than with the pursuit of truth. Instead, either the exclusionary rule must be used to foster a balance of individual and communitarian rights, or other more imaginative remedies should be crafted from s. 24(2) to protect the integrity of the legal system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1227
Author(s):  
Francesco Callari

O standard penal do Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (BARD) constitui uma regra de prova e de juízo, formulada e aplicada durante séculos em jurisdições de common law, que foi expressamente introduzida no Código de Processo Penal italiano apenas cerca de quinze anos atrás. Infelizmente, o conceito de dúvida razoável é inerentemente complexo e não se presta facilmente a uma definição ou a uma melhor delimitação. Diante disso, o autor examina sobretudo as diferentes posições e elaborações desenvolvidas pela doutrina e pela jurisprudência na Itália, oferecendo uma interpretação específica da regra BARD que valoriza e completa as conotações processuais particulares do sistema acusatório adotado na justiça penal italiana.


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