Suchergebnisse

An examination of the war crimes trial of Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines during WWII. The charge of command responsibility allowed the US military tribunal to convict Yamashita without demonstration of culpability on his part, theorizing that, by virtue of his position as commander, he was responsible for all acts committed by any of his troops. Following background data on the sociopolitical setting (ie, fear of the "Yellow Peril") during WWII, the trial process is explored, including designation of the case to the Supreme Court of the Philippines &, ultimately, to the US Supreme Court. It is contended that, as a result of condoning the command responsibility theory, & because of the influence of racial prejudice, the US hanged Yamashita, who in fact had done everything he could to prevent war atrocities. Also discussed is the trial of Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Japan's highest-ranking naval officer, who was charged with the identical war crimes, & whose testimony at Yamashita's trial revealed that Yamashita was not in command of the force that committed the atrocities for which he was hanged. S. Millett

This article considers the `hate agenda' as a model for interventions targeted at race hate crime. The authors consider current initiatives in different agencies and make some comparisons between the American and British experience.

Abstract: Evidence from all three British Crime Surveys is used to address the question of whether perpetrator race is a determinant of the decision to report offences of violence to the police. The evidence suggests that there is a differential victim report to the police, which cannot be reduced to offence characteristics which distinguish perpetrators by ethnicity. Fuller understanding of the complex patterns await additional data from British Crime Surveys in 1992 and thereafter.

We report findings from a conjoint experiment where respondents indicated what they viewed as an appropriate sentence for a series of hypothetical individuals convicted of federal crimes. The experiment signaled the race of the defendant by using distinctively "Black" and "white" names, allowing us to assess whether Americans are more punitive toward purportedly Black defendants. We also consider whether signals of the defendant's race condition the effects of the crime and various defendant characteristics. Surprisingly, the direct effect of our signal of defendants' purported race is null. We present evidence that this null finding is a product of offsetting tendencies: respondents who view persistent racial inequalities as the product of both past and ongoing institutional factors prescribed lengthier sentences for white defendants; those who discount these explanations prescribed lengthier sentences for Black defendants.1 We find only scattered evidence that the signal of defendants' race moderates the effects of other characteristics of the crime and defendant. Our approach and findings not only offer insights into how racial attitudes shape perceptions regarding what constitutes just punishment for crimes in the contemporary United States, but also demonstrate a novel approach to studying this domain and point to an array of promising avenues for future research.

Contents are grouped under the headings: Theory and research; Social justice and social policy; Pedagogy; State and right-wing repression; Struggles for justice.