Towards a Sociology of Punishment for International Criminal Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 216-226
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment

The final chapter situates some of the book’s major findings within contemporary resistance towards international criminal justice as global justice. It addresses how current pushback against international criminal justice is not only part of the story of the breaking of the universal and the move towards a multipolar, or a multiregional, system of international relations; pushback is also a result of the unevenness, tensions, and disconnections as revealed throughout the book’s analysis. Criminal justice has materialized transnationally with transnational agents and with ideas of criminal justice as part of a narrative of civilization circulating between borders. Therefore the book concludes by sketching out some key orientations for a sociology of punishment beyond the nation state.

scholarly journals Penal humanitarianism beyond the nation state: An analysis of international criminal justice

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
The State ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Recent Account

In a recent account of border control, Mary Bosworth introduces the notion of ‘penal humanitarianism’ to describe how humanitarianism enables penal power to move beyond the nation state. Based on a study of international criminal justice, this article applies and develops the notion of penal humanitarianism, and argues that that power to punish is particularly driven by humanitarian reason when punishment is disembedded from the nation state altogether. Disguising the fact of situatedness through claims to the global and universal, international criminal justice is not only a product of situated relations of power, but also constitutes new geographies of penal power. By complicating notions of humanitarianism, penal power and the state, international criminal justice raises interesting questions about the epistemological privilege of the nation state framework in the sociology of punishment.

From Moral Entrepreneurs to Moral Advocates

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-124
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
Moral Entrepreneurs

A sociology of punishment for international criminal justice enables attention to the norms, morals, and values at play in the motivational dynamics of penal reforms. At the same time, these cultural forces must be analysed against the background of social organization and structure, indeed, as to what enables people to think and feel in certain ways and to promote policies in accordance with their sensibilities. As such, this chapter explores international criminal justice as a field replete with cosmopolitan sensibilities, but also of lifestyles, qualifications, and restraints. Finding that international criminal justice is perceived as a cosmopolitan expression of social justice, the first part conceptualizes human rights NGOs working in international criminal justice as global moral entrepreneurs and shows how they use humanist discourses to promote global justice-making through law, turning them into advocates of international criminal justice. Balancing claims to authority in the field, the NGOs have to navigate between being ‘insiders’ as experts and ‘outsiders’ that can claim moral authority. The analysis draws on scholarship inspired by Bourdieu and is put to work on transnational fields, enabling attention to what is often downplayed in studies of international law, namely class. As such, the chapter inquires into whose imaginations of global justice become part of its materiality, finding that advocates of humanity predominantly belong to a class of transnational western professionals.

Penal Imaginations of Global Justice-Making

2019 ◽  
pp. 125-154
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
The Relationship

The chapter analyses the cosmopolitan penal imaginary building on western domestic penality, delving into the relationship between human rights sensibilities and criminal justice mentalities in the ‘fight against impunity’. Through the fieldwork in Uganda and Rwanda, the chapter describes asymmetries between the international and national criminal justice systems. It shows how international criminal justice circulates transnationally between different geographical sites via human rights NGOs and is closely linked to human rights expertise, and how human rights NGOs turn international criminal justice into issues about social justice. Applying a sociology of punishment perspective, the chapter brings out the similarities and differences in ‘penal imaginations’ between domestic and international criminal justice, and argues that international criminal justice both echoes the national and departs from it. For example, while international criminal justice relies upon retributive and expressive undertones, it makes no appeal to punitive sensibilities: a fact that can be understood in light of the close relation between international criminal justice and human rights NGOs. Yet, it is argued that human rights NGOs rely too strongly on punitive answers, and that amnesties can be just a matter of pragmatism in situations of profound violence. Thus, while the ICC has both retributive and reparative aims, the situation in northern Uganda demonstrates how international criminal justice became an impediment to peace. Moreover, the chapter reveals how a lot of practical issues had simply not been ‘thought of’ when setting up the ICC, such as acquittals and asylum-seeking witnesses.

Africa and the International Criminal Court: (Re)constructing the Narrative

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Sarah P. Nimigan
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Normative Factors

Abstract African support for the International Criminal Court (icc) from its earliest stages of institutional development is often referenced in the international criminal justice literature with limited explanation. The aim of this article is to establish a holistic account of African support for an international criminal court in the pre-Rome period, during the Rome Diplomatic Conference, and after the establishment of the icc. This analysis uses rational choice and constructivist international relations (ir) theory to help explain levels of African commitment to the Rome Statute using Kenya and Ivory Coast as case studies. While the icc has been criticized on neocolonial bases, it is important to reconstruct the narrative to more accurately reflect African agency over the international criminal justice project, and the icc in particular. African resistance to the institutional behaviour of the icc is situated in its broader political context(s): domestically and internationally, using rational and normative factors to explain various levels of African commitment to the Rome Statute.

Sovereignty and Solidarity

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-215
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment

As apt for analysis that positions penality at the centre of social organization, the final analytic chapter cultivates a Durkheimian approach to global justice-making, and argues that international criminal justice reinforces a social imaginary of cosmopolitan solidarity embodied in the notion of humanity. Durkheim’s emphasis on how solidarity in modern society is based around a notion of individualism, and of law and punishment as modes of social integration, make his insights particularly equipped for sociological analysis of the global as a site of crime, justice, and solidarity; in short, to the integrative functions of international criminal justice for the making of global moral order. However, rather than something ‘given’, the moral order embodied by ‘humanity’ reflects a dominant moral order, and one that is actively constituted. The chapter thus demonstrates how agents of international criminal justice argue their cases and punish in the name of humanity. Using the Rome Statute as a ‘crowbar’ for penal aid and rule of law promotion in the global South, international criminal justice is intertwined with rule of law promotion and penal aid in contexts of ‘failed’ justice, where cosmopolitan values are supposed to spread through the notion of ‘positive complementarity’. Global justice-making through international criminal justice is thus a multiscalar project, and one which, albeit solidarist, is coercively and deliberatively implemented. In this manner, a sociology of punishment for international criminal justice reveals some of the ways in which moral, personal, and social order is constituted globally.

Locating International Criminal Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
Global And Local

The chapter introduces the research aims, conceptual framework, and methodology of the book. Departing from the story of the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a global civil society achievement, and previous research into how global and local civil society disagreed on their support for the ICC’s intervention into the conflict in northern Uganda (where the latter pointed to how it jeopardized ongoing peace talks) the chapter lays out the central aim of the book: to explore how the role of international human rights NGOs in international criminal justice yields empirical insight into the meaning of punishment at the global level of analysis. It identifies three separate yet interrelated sets of analytic questions guiding the inquiry: (i) What are the roles of NGOs in international criminal justice? (ii) What characterizes punishment ‘gone global’? and (iii) How is international criminal justice constituted by and of ‘the global’? The chapter situates the analysis through a brief background section on the development and institutions of international criminal justice, and contextualizes the ICC’s intervention in Uganda. It delineates the theoretical orientations for the study’s conceptual framework and contribution to a sociology of punishment for international criminal justice, drawing on a range of literatures across criminology, sociology, international relations, and international law. It then describes the organization of the book and its relation to the research strategy, before addressing the study’s methodology of a multi-sited network ethnography, its empirical data, and ethical considerations.

Advocates of Humanity: Human Rights NGOs in International Criminal Justice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Object A ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment

Advocates of Humanity offers an analysis of international criminal justice from the perspective of sociology of punishment by exploring the role of human rights organizations in their mobilization for global justice through the International Criminal Court. Based on multi-sited ethnography, primarily in The Hague and Uganda, the author approaches the transnational networks of NGOs advocating for the ICC as an ethnographic object. A central objective is to explore how connections are made, and how forces and imaginations of global criminal justice travel. By analysing how international criminal justice is arranged spatially, and as such expresses social, political, and cultural relations of power, Advocates of Humanity shows how international criminal justice is situated in particular spaces, networks, and actors, and how they structure the imaginations of justice circulating in the field. From a sociology of punishment perspective, it compares the ‘penal imaginations’ of domestic and international criminal justice, and considers the particularly central role of victims as a universalized symbol of humanity for the legitimacy of international criminal justice. With clear global asymmetries emerging from the work, Advocates of Humanity provides descriptive as well as explanatory understandings of criminal punishment ‘gone global’, analysing its social causation while examining its cultural meanings, particularly as regards its role as an expression of ‘the international’ will to punish. To whom is it meaningful, and why?

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