Justice Defiled

2021 ◽  
pp. 217-239
Author(s):  
Debasish Roy Chowdhury ◽  
John Keane
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Court System ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practical Effect ◽  
And Control

India’s criminal justice system is seen to be so broken that even the dysfunctional and corrupt police force is reckoned to have a better shot at ensuring justice than the courts. Given the speed at which rape cases—or all cases, for that matter—crawl through a clogged and corrupted legal system, the chances of swift justice are non-existent. The decaying and sluggish court system ensures that India has one of the world’s highest rates of ‘undertrials’, or people awaiting trial and sentencing in prison. A clogged and corrupted court system hastens the breakdown of the social foundations of Indian democracy. Ultimately, the infirmities of the Indian judiciary violate the spirit and substance of the rule of law, the principle that legal institutions and written laws should have the practical effect of curbing and balancing the ambitions of the powerful, and those seeking power over others. According to that principle, rule of law is the cure for despotism. What India now has, however, is ‘rule through law’, a system in which law is weaponized as an instrument of power and control by elected despots, thanks to a slow and servile judiciary

The Legal System and the Rule of Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 223-255
Author(s):  
Xiaoqun Xu
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Court System ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
Narcotics Trafficking

Chapter 9 covers criminal justice in the first two decades after Mao’s death (1977–1996), when Deng Xiaoping was the top leader. With a brief summary of political developments, it outlines the post-Mao legal-judicial reforms as part of the reform and opening policies launched by Deng, including the enactment of the first Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedural Law of the PRC. While the Criminal Code retained Maoist language and influence, such as placing certain offenses in a category of “counterrevolutionary crimes,” the Criminal Procedural Law offered the beginning steps leading to procedural justice. The reforms included construction of a court system, professionalization of judges, and restoration of the legal profession. The chapter also looks at legal responses to reemerging crimes such as prostitution, human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, and pornography.

“Justice Is Something That Is Unheard of for the Average Negro”: Racial Disparities in New Orleans Criminal Justice, 1920–1945

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S Adler
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Racial Biases ◽  
The Social

Abstract Historians of race relations and criminal justice have emphasized the ways in which the rule of law emerged as a mechanism of racial control in the early twentieth-century South, gradually supplanting rough justice. This essay examines the protracted, uneven pace of this transformation and the development of Jim Crow criminal justice in New Orleans. An analysis of the adjudication of homicide cases in New Orleans between 1920 and 1945 reveals that the majority of black-on-white homicides did not result in convictions, and only a small minority of African Americans suspected—or even convicted—of interracial murder went to the gallows. But racial disparities in convictions and executions widened dramatically during the interwar era. Thus, this essay analyzes the social, cultural, and legal shifts that expanded race-based differentials in criminal justice. It also argues that, ironically, Jim Crow prescriptions intensified white fears of African American crime and helped to generate the anxieties that legal measures were imposed to address, increasing racial disparities and making racial biases in criminal justice self-perpetuating.

scholarly journals The Violation of Women - Towards a Clearer Consciousness

1969 ◽  
pp. 900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Battered Woman ◽  
Battered Woman Syndrome ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
And Control

The author examines the dynamics of power and control underlying the violation of women in society. This violation, she argues, is caused not by independent, isolated incidents by aberrant individuals, but rather, by societal behaviours and attitudes which systematically discriminate and oppress women. The author also demonstrates how the legal system in its reliance on the "battered woman syndrome" perpetuates the marginalization of women. This condition is further worsened by use of terminology which negatively characterises women. The important questions of why women are allowed to be violated in our society and how this violation can be prevented remain unacknowledged and unanswered. The author concludes that there are no simple solutions to achieve the goal of eradicating the violation of women and calls for the establishment of substantive means to effectively meet the goal and prevent it from becoming a mere ideal.

scholarly journals Controlling Drug Users: Forms of Power and Behavioural Regulation in Drug Treatment Services

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bacon ◽  
Toby Seddon
Keyword(s):  
Drug Treatment ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Control Techniques ◽  
Treatment Services ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Responsive Regulation ◽  
Drug Problems ◽  
And Control

Abstract This article examines the control practices used in drug treatment services to regulate the behaviour of people with drug problems. Drawing on an extensive qualitative study, we developed a conceptual framework, integrating the notion of responsive regulation with Wrong’s sociology of power. The picture that emerges is of a complex ‘web of controls’, combining diverse forms of power and control techniques, used to steer action and shape behavioural outcomes. It is argued that we can understand these control practices within drug treatment as part of broader strategies for the social regulation of the poor, built on deep-rooted hybrids of punishment and welfare. The article concludes with the suggestion that drug treatment represents an important site for understanding penal power today.

E-Commerce as Knowledge Management

2011 ◽  
pp. 2768-2787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel McLean ◽  
Nigel M. Blackie
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Business To Consumer ◽  
Commercial Organizations ◽  
And Control

This chapter constructs the concept of e-commerce as knowledge management. The socially constructed approach to knowledge management is adopted. Through qualitative research, rooted in the Social Constructionist-Critical Theory paradigm, the chapter examines how consumers use the Internet in commercially related activity. Through semi-structured interviews with consumers three main themes are identified and explored (interaction with commercial organizations, consumer-to-consumer interaction, power and control in business-to-consumer interaction). The chapter concludes that the Internet facilitates the construction and sharing of knowledge amongst consumers, but appears to strengthen barriers and boundaries between consumers and companies. An illustration of how companies could effectively utilize the Internet to communicate with customers is offered in an analysis of a discussion forum.

Interpersonal Freedom and Freedom of Action

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-363
Author(s):  
Felix E. Oppenheim
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conversational Language ◽  
And Control ◽  
Freedom Of Action

When speaking of freedom, La Bruyère's word comes to mind—that everything has been said and that we come too late to add anything. Yet an analysis of the concept of freedom may be warranted for the very reason that it is being used by everyone to refer to whatever he considers valuable, from obedience to law (positive or natural) to autonomy and economic abundance. I believe that it is possible to assign to “freedom” in its different aspects meanings which are emotively neutral and operationally testable, and thereby to rescue for the social sciences generally and for political science in particular an important set of concepts, closely related as they are to those of power and control.One would have to start with disentangling the widely different senses in which “freedom” is being used indiscriminately. I shall deal with freedom in only two of its many meanings, interpersonal freedom and freedom of action. One of the difficulties will be to steer a middle course between the vagueness of conversational language and the awkwardness of a precise terminology; but I hope to demonstrate that such an endeavor is no idle exercise in semantics but a necessary prerequisite for the fruitful investigation of social and political phenomena.

Differentiated visibilities: RT Arabic’s narration of Russia’s role in the Syrian war

2019 ◽  
pp. 175063521988907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deena Dajani ◽  
Marie Gillespie ◽  
Rhys Crilley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Control

This article focuses on the social media content of RT Arabic – formerly Russia Today – the Russian state-funded international news media organization. It presents results of a qualitative analysis of social media posts in order to assess whether and how RT Arabic constructs a strategic narrative of its involvement in the war in Syria. It also contributes to conceptualizations of how state-sponsored strategic narratives operate in practice and can be mobilized as a soft power resource. Our key finding is that, while Russia’s military presence is rendered almost invisible on RT Arabic, its role as a political and diplomatic actor is highly visible. Although Syrian civilians feature as the most prominent actors, they do so mostly as helpless victims and passive witnesses. Syria is represented as a non-sovereign, dysfunctional state, vulnerable to incursion by foreign forces that are vying for power and control in the region. In RT’s representation of the conflict, Russia is portrayed as coming to the aid of Syrians and Syria, as a benign presence promoting the establishment of good governance and skilfully managing the complex diplomatic relations surrounding the conflict. Rather than using straightforward propagandistic or hard-line ideological narratives, RT Arabic creates its own style of persuasive soft power on social media. This style is characterized by the differentiated visibilities afforded to Russia’s military, diplomatic and political roles. Deftly balancing exposure and concealment, RT Arabic performs a legitimating function – rendering Russia’s presence and power in a positive light.

On the social construction of geomedia technologies

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Fast ◽  
Emilia Ljungberg ◽  
Lotta Braunerhielm
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Lives ◽  
And Control

Geomedia technologies represent an advanced set of digital media devices, hardwares, and softwares. Previous research indicates that these place contingent technologies are currently gaining significant social relevance, and contribute to the shaping of contemporary public lives and spaces. However, research has yet to empirically examine how, and for whom, geomedia technologies are made relevant, as well as the role of these technologies in wider processes of social and spatial (re-)production. This special issue contributes valuable knowledge to existing research in the realm of communication geography, by viewing the current “geomediascape” through the lens of social constructivist perspectives, and by interrogating the reciprocal shaping of technology, the social, and space/place. Scrutinizing the social construction of geomedia technologies in various empirical contexts and in relation to different social groups, the essays deal with important questions of power and control, and ultimately challenge the notion of (geo)mediatization as a neutral process.

scholarly journals Caught, clubbed and burnt: criminological reflections on the incidence of jungle justice in Benin Metropolis, southern Nigeria

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Imuetinyan Obarisiagbon Barr
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Court System ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The Social ◽  
Southern Nigeria

All over Southern Nigeria, incidents of people taking the law into their hands and meting out instant justice on suspected criminals without recourse to the rule of law and the position of Section 33 (1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria abound. This motivation for participation in jungle justice was therefore explored. A combination of both qualitative and quantitative techniques was employed to collect data from six hundred and fifteen respondents. A descriptive analysis of the quantitative data collected was undertaken, using frequency distribution while the qualitative data were content analysed. Findings from this study reveal that motivation for jungle justice was multifaceted. Illiteracy, lack of trust on the police, flaccid court system, chronic anger due to economic situation and disregard for the rule of law and human right were some of the motivation for the alarming incidence of the social phenomenon. Based on the findings of this study, there is the need to overhaul the criminal justice processes with a view to boosting the confidence of the public in its activities and also embark on a teaching on no violence and the ills of jungle justice.Keywords: Jungle justice, court, police, human rights

E-Commerce as Knowledge Management

2011 ◽  
pp. 1618-1637
Author(s):  
Rachel McLean ◽  
Nigel M. Blackie
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Business To Consumer ◽  
Commercial Organizations ◽  
And Control

This chapter constructs the concept of e-commerce as knowledge management. The socially constructed approach to knowledge management is adopted. Through qualitative research, rooted in the Social Constructionist-Critical Theory paradigm, the chapter examines how consumers use the Internet in commercially related activity. Through semi-structured interviews with consumers three main themes are identified and explored (interaction with commercial organizations, consumer-to-consumer interaction, power and control in business-to-consumer interaction). The chapter concludes that the Internet facilitates the construction and sharing of knowledge amongst consumers, but appears to strengthen barriers and boundaries between consumers and companies. An illustration of how companies could effectively utilize the Internet to communicate with customers is offered in an analysis of a discussion forum.

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