Suchergebnisse

In 1818, the Governor of the Chinese province of Shansi reported the case of Chan Lin who, while gatekeeper for the district magistrate, maintained "external criminal connections". Using his position he endeavoured to get a money changer to accept for exchange more than 300 ounces of sub-standard silver. Upon being rebuffed he took steps to have the money changer locked up. The Board of Punishments (which was a senior court of appeal in China during that period) held that because the act differed in no way from extortion as practised by rapacious government underlings, it would be improper to show leniency to the accused simply because he did not succeed in gaining an unfair pecuniary advantage. In this regard personal servants of an official would be punished on the same scale as minor government functionaries. This example of what might be termed public corruption raises several interesting issues which will be developed in this paper.

After the military massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June it came as no surprise that the nominated 'rioters and counter revolutionaries' would soon be paraded before the courts. Even in the People's Republic of China, where a formal criminal court structure is a comparatively recent addition to the social control framework, the trial process is being employed as an immediate state response to community disjuncture and political challenge.

In a somewhat belated incursion into the international debate about the threat of organised crime, Federal and State governments in Australia have chosen to represent the 'menace' as an attack on the institution of the state as much as a physical and financial danger to society. This is consistent with the approaches of governments in the United States and Italy in constructing the reality of the Mafia.

The contemporary crisis in the maintenance of civil order on both sides of the Irish border has initiated unique developments in the "system" of criminal justice within Ireland. The government of the Republic and the administration of the Province have responded to various attacks on their legitimacy by relying on the controls of the criminal sanction, while radically altering the process through which that sanction is applied and accorded its full effect. While denying the political nature of the conflict, these governments have cloaked extraordinary social control measures in the authority of the rule of law. They would have us believe that by relying on the controls of criminal law rather than military force alone, violent challenges to their existence are not attacks on the substance of the state. But how they have fundamentally altered the face of the criminal sanction to propagate this myth of normality! And with each particular innovation, the broader workings of criminal law in Ireland are certainly (and perhaps insidiously) taking on a new significance for the state control function.

Despite the reality of partition that created "two Irelands," comparative analysis of the state's reactions to terrorism in the Province and in the Republic is rare. The struggle over reunification, which permeates society on both sides of the border, is usually viewed by the populist press not from the Irish viewpoint, but rather from the perspective of the British government. Given this bias, organized resistance -- most notably in the North of Ireland -- is represented as an assault on a majority-supported state. Because the legitimacy of the state under attack is rarely questioned, and the motivations for the resistance are over-simplified and misrepresented, the state's reaction to such terrorism escapes criticism, except in the most obvious instances.

The legislative provisions which make it an offence to procure a miscarriage unlawfully or assist in the unlawful procurement are to be found in sections 58 and 59 or the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. In recent years the most common way for an Irish woman to obtain an abortion has been to leave the Republic and obtain such an operation in Britain, where the restrictions imposed on the medical profession with regard to performing operations are far less onerous. How then would the Irish courts view secondary parties to such extra-territorial activities?

Governing through Globalised Crime provides an analysis of the impact of globalisation of crime on the governance capacity of the international criminal justice system. It explores how the perceived increased risk in global security has resulted in a reformulation of the relationship between crime and governance.The book seeks to argue that values of freedom, equality, communitarian harmony and personal integrity which the prosecution of crimes against humanity are said to advance, need not be sacrificed in a new world order obsessed with partial security and secularized risk