Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eastern European nations faced the dilemma of either maintaining the Soviet criminal justice system or westernizing it. A desire to join the Council of Europe and the European Union forced many newly independent nations to harmonize their justice systems according to Western parameters. This included serious changes ranging from providing more rights to a criminal defendant (e.g., requiring a judicial control over searches and seizures) to the abolition of the death penalty. Some of the ideas were borrowed from the Continental European legal system and its Inquisitorial criminal process. This transformation was relatively painless since the Soviet Criminal Justice System always closely resembled the criminal process of Western Europe. However, several countries (e.g., Russia) began introducing the elements of Accusatorial trials, including a jury trials. This paper will focus on the difficulties of westernization of Eastern European criminal justice systems.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Experiencing maltreatment during childhood can increase the likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior during adulthood. Research suggests the possibility that cognitive distortions (i.e., inaccurate attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs) may mediate this relationship. The current study considered this by examining if criminal thinking styles mediate the relationship between child maltreatment and adult criminal behavior. Data from 338 incarcerated males supported our hypothesis. Specifically, child maltreatment history was associated with more criminal thinking, which in turn was associated with higher degrees of criminal behavior during adulthood. Criminal thinking accounted for the child maltreatment-adult criminal behavior relationship. Implications and future research are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Increasing racial diversity in criminal justice-related occupations is expected to improve the legitimacy and equity of criminal justice systems. Common to this expectation is the assumption that diversity promotes multiculturalism in contexts of decision-making, such as police and court organizations. While there have been efforts to promote minority representation in justice-related occupations, and dramatic increases in select areas over the past several decades, this increase is concentrated in service sector positions such as policing, security and corrections. Minorities remain underrepresented in professional and administrative sectors where they would presumably have more influence on cultural norms of justice systems. There is need for institutions of higher education to recruit and prepare minority students to fill these professional and administrative roles.

Assuming more equitable distribution of minority workers across service and professional sectors, it remains questionable whether cultural competencies and professional orientations minorities introduce are constant over generations. For example, older generations and more recent minority-group immigrants may be more fluent in native languages, or multi-lingual, compared to younger generations adapted to mainstream cultural norms. Understanding these and other generational or cohort differences would contextualize expectations of diversity in justice-related occupations, and efforts to recruit and prepare minority students in relevant areas of higher education.

This paper explores similarities and differences of minority-group cohorts with criminal justice-related interest and experience. Using in-depth interviews (N=30) with three cohorts (high school students participating in a federal court internship, college students majoring in criminal justice, and federal court workers), we compare and contrast respondent’s identities, language abilities, and orientations towards minority-community crime and criminal justice. The paper concludes with discussion of implications of cohort similarities and differences for diversity initiatives in educational and employment contexts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A series of mass atrocities since the early 1990s has escalated demands for the creation of supranational courts and tribunals, and thus highlighted the tremendous variation in national support for such institutions. The paper analyzes the conditions under which states agree to transfer sovereignty over criminal justice to supranational authorities. It treats states? policies toward the International Criminal Court as a proxy for their general attitude in this regard. As we demonstrate in the paper, standard Realist and Liberal theories of international relations cannot explain the pattern of support/non-support that we observe among the world?s 193 states. Instead, we develop a Constructivist theory of interest formation which argues that interactions with regional human rights courts (European or inter-American) transform political attitudes and judicial procedures in the states that join them. In turn, this "institutional learning" makes such states more likely to accept or support supranational authority in criminal matters. (Human rights courts focus on the actions and legal duties of states, while criminal courts focus on the actions and duties of individuals.) The analysis uses both qualitative and quantitative methods and a database on national involvement in regional human rights courts and national policies toward the International Criminal Court that we constructed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Victims of crime are currently enjoying extensive official attention across many legal jurisdictions. As such, there has been renewed interest in the impacts of vicitmization, especially with the wide proliferation of Victim Impact Statements. This paper first draws on developments in our understanding of ‘account-making’, from the sociological and psychological literatures, to suggest that understanding the impact of crime on victims necessitates a more detailed appreciation of how such experiences impact upon victims’ ability to construct life-narratives. The paper then draws on qualitative/ethnographic research recently carried out in England and Wales to illustrate the role of victims' 'account-making' in criminal trials under an adversarial system. Qualitative and quantitative data is produced to illustrate how a victim’s story is often changed, amended or replaced through the trial procedure, especially though the process of giving evidence. Hence, the victim’s interpretation of the story is substituted for a version (or versions) compiled by other actors within the process. This is problematic, it is submitted, because it denies the victim a chance to derive positive outcomes from the process, and the therapeutic benefits of ‘story-telling’ for sufferers of many traumas, and for crime victims in particular, are discussed.

As such, it is submitted that a victim-centred trial would ensure victims could effectively communicate their own interpretation of their stories to the court. Thus, to put victims ‘at the heart’ of the system (as the UK government promises) is also to put their stories at the heart of that system.