Suchergebnisse

This book explores one of the most contentious and sensitive topics in criminal justice: the release and resettlement of life-sentenced offenders. It offers a major insight into how societies respond to serious crime, why offenders are recalled and identifies important elements of successful reintegration for released offenders.

Life imprisonment has replaced capital punishment as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide. As a consequence, it has become the leading issue in international criminal justice reform. In the first global survey of prisoners serving life terms, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights-based reappraisal of this exceptionally harsh punishment. The authors estimate that nearly half a million people face life behind bars, and the number is growing as jurisdictions both abolish death sentences and impose life sentences more freely for crimes that would never have attracted capital punishment. Life Imprisonment explores this trend through systematic data collection and legal analysis, persuasively illustrated by detailed maps, charts, tables, and comprehensive statistical appendices. The central question--can life sentences be just?--is straightforward, but the answer is complicated by the vast range of penal practices that fall under the umbrella of life imprisonment. Van Zyl Smit and Appleton contend that life imprisonment without possibility of parole can never be just. While they have some sympathy for the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, they conclude that life imprisonment, in many of the ways it is implemented worldwide, infringes on the requirements of justice. They also examine the outliers--states that have no life imprisonment--to highlight the possibility of abolishing life sentences entirely. Life Imprisonment is an incomparable resource for lawyers, lawmakers, criminologists, policy scholars, and penal-reform advocates concerned with balancing justice and public safety.--

Introduction / Dirk van Zyl Smit, Catherine Appleton and Georgie Benford -- The impact of life imprisonment on criminal justice reform in the United States / Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis -- Life imprisonment in Latin America / Beatriz López Lorca -- Life without parole in Australia : current practices, juveniles and retrospective sentencing / Kate Fitz-Gibbon -- Life imprisonment and human rights in Uganda / Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi -- A new form of life imprisonment for India? / Madhurima Dhanuka -- An administrative procedure for life prisoners : law and practice of royal pardon in the Netherlands / Wiene van Hattum and Sonja Meijer -- Constitutionalizing life imprisonment without parole : the case of Hungary / Miklós Lévay -- A right to hope? : life imprisonment in France / Marion Vannier -- The paradox of reform : life imprisonment in England and Wales / Catherine Appleton and Dirk van Zyl Smit -- Life imprisonment in Belgium : current human rights challenges / Sonja Snacken, Ineke Casier, Caroline Devynck and Diete Humblet -- Confusingly compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights : the release of life sentence prisoners in Ireland / Diarmuid Griffin and Ian O'Donnell -- Punishment in Portuguese criminal law : a penal system without life imprisonment / Inês Horta Pinto -- The abolition of life imprisonment in Brazil and its contradictions / Giovanna Frisso -- Long-term imprisonment in Latin America / Francisco Javier de León Villalba -- Life and long-term imprisonment in the countries of the former Yugoslavia / Filip Vojta -- The right to hope for lifers : an analysis of court judgments and practice in Poland / Maria Ejchart-Dubois, Maria Nielaczna and Aneta Wilkowska-Plóciennik -- Long-term and life imprisonment in Spain : release procedures and terrorism / Jon-Mirena Landa Gorostiza -- Constitutional limits on life imprisonment and post-sentence preventive detention in Germany / Axel Dessecker -- Life without parole for preventive reasons : lifelong post-sentence detention in Switzerland / Anna Coninx -- Life imprisonment and related institutions in the nordic countries / Tapio Lappi-Seppälä

Life imprisonment is the punishment most often imposed worldwide for what societies regard as the most serious offences. Yet, in Asia the phenomenon has never been studied systematically. Life Imprisonment in Asia fills this major gap. It brings together thirteen new essays on life imprisonment in key jurisdictions in the region. Each chapter consolidates what is known about the law and practice of life imprisonment in the jurisdiction and then explores aspects of the imposition or implementation of life sentences that the authors regard as particularly problematic. In some instances, the main issue is the imposition of life sentences by the courts and their relationship to the death penalty. In others, the focus is on the treatment of life sentenced prisoners. In many instances, the most prominent question is whether life sentenced prisoners should be released and, if so, according to what processes. In the overview chapter, the editors place the complex picture that emerges of life imprisonment in Asia in a global context and point to reforms urgently required to ensure that Asian life sentences meet international human rights standards. Life Imprisonment in Asia should be read by everyone who has an interest in just punishments for serious offences, not only in Asia, but throughout the world. It will be an invaluable tool for lawyers, criminologists, policy makers and penal reform advocates in the region and beyond. Dirk van Zyl Smit is Emeritus Professor of Comparative and International Penal Law, University of Nottingham and Emeritus Professor of Criminology, University of Cape Town. Catherine Appleton is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research and Education in Security, Prisons and Forensic Psychiatry, St Olavs Hospital and at the Department of Mental Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Vucong Giao is Head of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law and Director of the Research Center for Human and Citizens Rights under School of Law, Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU-LS).