Reason to disbelieve: evaluating the rape claims of women seeking asylum in the UK

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Baillot ◽  
Sharon Cowan ◽  
Vanessa E. Munro
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
National Study ◽  
Reasonable Degree ◽  
Return Home ◽  
The Uk

AbstractAsylum applicants in the UK must show, to a ‘reasonable degree of likelihood’, a well-founded fear of persecution, on the basis of race, religion, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, in the event of return ‘home’. This requirement presents myriad challenges both to claimants and decision-makers. Based on findings from a three-year national study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, this paper explores those challenges as they relate to women seeking asylum in the UK whose applications include an allegation of rape. The study explored the extent to which difficulties relating to disclosure and credibility, which are well documented in the context of women's sexual assault allegations in the criminal justice system, might be replicated and compounded for female asylum-seekers whose applications include a claim of rape. Findings suggest that the structural and practical obstacles faced in establishing credibility, and the existence of scepticism about rape claims and asylum-seeking more generally, mean that decision-making can often be experienced as arbitrary, unjust, uninformed or contradictory, making it difficult for women asylum applicants who allege rape to find refuge in the UK.

The Ohio Data Story in Three Part

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 237-239
Author(s):  
Sara Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The People ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Data Platform

The complex, intricate process of felony sentencing in Ohio makes ensuring clear, comprehendible sentences of the utmost import for the administration of justice and promoting confidence in the system. As such, for more than a year, the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission worked with justice system partners to develop a package of uniform felony sentencing documents that prescribe the most clear and concise, minimum language required to comply with Criminal Rule 32 and existing case law and establishes standardized, common data essential for identifying relationships and trends common to all felony courts. The adoption of the package of felony sentencing documents is the first step to begin standardized, aggregate felony sentencing data collection in Ohio—the Ohio Sentencing Data Platform. Sentencing data provide opportunities for robust research, including the ability to parse comparative data between counties, recognizing that community standards can drive law enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing decision-making. The Ohio Sentencing Data Platform will improve information about the people we are trying to help in the criminal justice system and has been met with enthusiastic interest and support from judges and courts throughout the state. Our modest, incremental path will ultimately yield high dividends in building public trust in criminal justice processes and outcomes. At the same time, without fiscal or administrative burden, it will help give judges and decision- makers access to the best information available to perform their public service duty in the most impactful way.

Machine-Learnt Bias? Algorithmic Decision Making and Access to Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-100
Author(s):  
Malwina Anna Wojcik
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Crime Mapping ◽  
The Us ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
The Uk

The pressure on the criminal justice system in England and Wales is mounting. Recent figures reveal that despite a rise in recorded crime, the number of defendants in court proceedings has been the lowest in 50 years. This indicates a crisis of access to criminal justice. Predictive policing and risk assessment programmes based on algorithmic decision making (ADM) offer a prospect of increasing efficiency of law enforcement, eliminating delays and cutting the costs. These technologies are already used in the UK for crime-mapping and facilitating decisions regarding prosecution of arrested individuals. In the US their deployment is much wider, covering also sentencing and parole applications.

scholarly journals Initial views from the Digital Panopticon: Reconstructing Penal Outcomes in the 1790s

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 893-928 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ward ◽  
Lucy Williams
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Methodological Difficulties

The criminal justice system of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England has been likened to a corridor of connected rooms or stage sets. At each stage in the judicial process—from detection and apprehension through to trial, sentencing, and punishment—decisions were made that might remove the accused from the system entirely, or propel that person further along the process into a number of possible outcomes. That decision making (including the identity of the decision makers and the criteria upon which their decisions were based) has been the subject of much historical study. Less attention has been given to the individual experiences—the singular journeys—of the accused through this labyrinthine process. This is in large part because of the inherent evidential and methodological difficulties of reconstructing judicial pathways and the wider criminal lives of offenders. As Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker note, the archives of criminal justice were created to manage the bureaucracy of prosecution and punishment, not to reveal the criminal's navigation of that system. Tracing an individual offender's journey through the judicial process (and that person's life beyond) therefore entails piecing together fragments spread almost randomly across hundreds of thousands of pages.

"Crimesim": A Computer Simulation Model

1979 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald W. Smith ◽  
Jerry D. Debenham
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Simulation Model ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Computer Simulation Model ◽  
Computer Languages

"Crimesim" is a new computer simulation model that can be adapted for use in any criminal justice system or agency without extensive knowledge of computers or computer languages. The model is designed to be used by researchers, planners, and decision makers. Crimesim models a system by allowing one to determine which of available alternatives will provide the greatest benefit, in terms of stated priorities and cost effectiveness. The model can be used as a tool in decision making by helping the user to organize and analyze information and assess possible alternatives.

Unlock imagined: arts in criminal justice

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-143
Author(s):  
Alison Frater
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Optimistic Picture ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Causes Of Crime

Starting with a personal perspective this piece outlines the place and role of the arts in the criminal justice system in the UK. It paints an optimistic picture, though an unsettling one, because the imagination and reflexiveness of the arts reveals a great deal about the causes of crime and the consequences of incarceration. It raises questions about the transforming impact of the arts: how the benefits could, and should, be optimised and why evaluations of arts interventions are consistent in identifying the need for a non-coercive, more socially focused, paradigm for rehabilitation. It concludes that the deeper the arts are embedded in the criminal justice system the greater the benefits will be, that a more interdisciplinary approach would support better theoretical understanding, and that increased capacity to deliver arts in the criminal justice system is needed to offer more people a creative pathway out of crime.

A New System Takes Shape

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Guiney
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Green Paper ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Legal Effect ◽  
Parole System

The chapter examines the legislative planning process that gradually refined the early release framework eventually given legal effect by Part Two of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. The chapter begins with a review of the post-election planning process that gathered pace following the 1987 General Election. It examines the Home Office strategic awayday held at Leeds Castle in September 1987 and goes on to consider the Green Paper, Punishment, Custody and the Community and an unprecedented conference at Ditchley Park which brought together senior decision-makers from across the criminal justice system. The chapter then examines the passage of the Criminal Justice Bill 1990/91 and reflects upon the dramatic backlash against the new parole system in the mid-1990s. The chapter concludes with a critical appraisal of the underlying tensions that defined the development of criminal justice during this transitional period.

After the Crime

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-396
Author(s):  
Paul H. Robinson ◽  
Muhammad Sarahne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Collateral Consequences ◽  
Probation And Parole ◽  
Principles Of Justice

Although an offender’s conduct before and during the crime is the traditional focus of criminal law and sentencing rules, an examination of post-offense conduct can also be important in promoting criminal justice goals. After the crime, different offenders make different choices and have different experiences, and those differences can suggest appropriately different treatment by judges, correctional officials, probation and parole supervisors, and other decision makers in the criminal justice system. Positive post-offense conduct ought to be acknowledged and rewarded, not only to encourage it but also as a matter of fair and just treatment. This essay describes four kinds of positive post-offense conduct that merit special recognition and preferential treatment: the responsible offender, who avoids further deceit and damage to others during the process leading to conviction; the debt-paid offender, who suffers the full punishment deserved (according to true principles of justice rather than the sentence actually imposed); the reformed offender, who takes affirmative steps to leave criminality behind; and the redeemed offender, who out of genuine remorse tries to atone for the offense. The essay considers how one might operationalize a system for giving special accommodation to such offenders. Positive post-offense conduct might be rewarded, for example, through the selection and shaping of sanctioning methods, through giving preference in access to education, training, treatment, and other programs, and through elimination or restriction of collateral consequences of conviction that continue after the sentence is completed.

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