The Routledge International Handbook of Criminology and Human Rights

Leanne Weber, Elaine Fishwick, Marinella Marmo, Leanne Weber, Elaine Fishwick, Marinella Marmo

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317395546
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

The Routledge International Handbook of Criminology and Human Rights brings together a diverse body of work from around the globe and across a wide range of criminological topics and perspectives, united by its critical application of human rights law and principles. This collection explores the interdisciplinary reach of criminology and is the first of its kind to link criminology and human rights.

This text is divided into six sections, each with an introduction and an overview provided by one of the editors. The opening section makes an assessment of the current standing of human rights within the discipline. Each of the remaining sections corresponds to a substantive area of harm prevention and social control which together make up the main core of contemporary criminology, namely:

• criminal law in practice;

• transitional justice, peacemaking and community safety;

• policing in all its guises;

• traditional and emerging approaches to criminal justice;

• and penality, both within and beyond the prison.

This Handbook forms an authoritative foundation on which future teaching and research about human rights and criminology can be built. This multi-disciplinary text is an essential companion for criminologists, sociologists, legal scholars and political scientists.

Part I
Taking stock of human rights within criminology

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This opening section of the handbook establishes a foundation for the collection. Rather than focusing on one substantive area of criminology, we have included here chapters that provide an historical overview of the application of human rights law and principles within the discipline and reflect on the impact of human rights in some key areas of criminological research. Many of the themes introduced in this opening section are explored in more depth later in the handbook. For some of the authors, human rights have played a major role in their own scholarship, either because human rights frameworks have provided a powerful rhetorical and/or legal framing for their criminological concerns, or because human rights and their relationship to crime and criminal justice are the direct object of their scholarly inquiry. For others, human rights have played a marginal role to date in their field, but may have the potential to be incorporated more fully into future scholarship.

The handbook opens with a reflexive piece from Thérèse Murphy and Noel Whitty that poses many key questions about the role played by human rights law and principles within both contemporary and historical criminology. They review four contexts in which human rights have been applied within criminology, which they identify as legal reformist, studies of state crime and genocide, socio-political approaches, and a final, less easily defined, category that advocates open minded enquiry beyond the search for human rights violations. For these authors, seeking to situate human rights within the discipline requires close engagement with past and present debates over the appropriate relationship between scholarly analysis and political/legal advocacy.

We then move beyond the disciplinary boundaries of criminology into the arena of international human rights law, in order to assess the salience of crime and criminal justice matters within human rights enforcement processes. Human rights scholar Rhona Smith provides us with an overview of United Nations treaty monitoring procedures then systematically examines a large body of documentation that assesses the human rights performance of governments. She identifies recurring themes concerning the administration of justice, the prevention of violence, and human trafficking which are also familiar topics of concern and inquiry within criminology.

Having established that there is considerable human rights terrain with which criminologists can engage, we then include a chapter from Anthony Amatrudo that reviews the contribution of three notable scholars who have elucidated the connections between human rights and criminology. Manuel Lopez-Ray is depicted as an optimistic advocate for the application of human rights principles within the criminal justice system. Stanley Cohen is portrayed as taking a somewhat bleaker view. Nevertheless, the author identifies Cohen as one of the first criminologists to champion the use of sociological analysis to illuminate human rights abuses. In relation to Lucia Zedner, the only living criminologist amongst the three, Amatrudo argues that her main contribution has been to point out actual and potential human rights violations associated with the single-minded pursuit of security by contemporary governments.

The authors of the remaining chapters discuss the relevance of human rights within specific ideological or topical strands within criminology, ‘taking stock’ of the relevance of human rights in their field and, conversely, of the impact of criminological research on the understanding of key human rights issues. Contributions of this type include Biko Agozino, who brings a postcolonial perspective to the task; David Scott on prisoners’ rights and abolitionism; Raymond Michalowski on the study of state-corporate crime; Rosemary Barberet and Diana Rodriguez-Spahia on feminist criminology; Sandra Walklate on the study of victims; Randy K. Lippert on governmentality; and Russell Hogg on globalization.

Biko Agozino exposes the lack of recognition within historical and contemporary criminology of one of the most large-scale human rights abuses of all time: trans-Atlantic slavery. Supplementing the list of foundational thinkers provided by Amatrudo, the author argues that the nineteenth century critique of slavery by W.E.B. Du Bois represents the earliest example of a human rights perspective within criminology. The lack of mainstream recognition of the significance of this work is all the more perplexing considering that other Africana scholars subsequently expanded upon Du Bois’s seminal analysis. David Scott focuses on another abolitionist cause that has arguably received wider recognition within the discipline, that of prison abolitionism. While acknowledging that human rights language has been employed by many notable abolitionists, including Stanley Cohen and Barbara Hudson, Scott recognizes widespread reticence amongst others to follow this path. He attributes this to underlying differences in understandings of the meaning of human rights, but notes that all positions are united by a focus on the vulnerability of those who are demarcated as ‘other’.

The following three chapters by Rosemary Barberet and Diana Rodriguez-Spahia, Sandra Walklate and Randy K. Lippert all acknowledge, openly or tacitly, the paucity of literature in their fields that explores connections between human rights and criminological analysis. Barberet and Rodriguez-Spahia apply an historical lens in their chapter on the linkages between feminist criminology and human rights, identifying points of commonality between the many different strains of feminist criminology and human rights thinking. They note that both fields of inquiry have focused on exposing inequalities in gender relations and making the lived experience of women central, and conclude that a more active engagement would be of mutual benefit. Walklate is more circumspect about the value of human rights approaches in the study of victims. She notes that the increased recognition of crime victims that has been promoted, belatedly, through international human rights discourse and victims’ rights treaties, has not been matched by a capacity to reconcile the universal normative standards they espouse with the particular circumstances of victim’s lives, including fundamental needs for recognition and respect. Like Walklate, Lippert identifies the universalist claims of human rights as the main barrier to intellectual engagement with human rights by governmentality-inspired criminologists. He notes that a Foucauldian perspective cautions that rights talk may be readily deployed as a legitimizing tool of government. Lippert concludes that this scepticism, combined with the analytical toolkit provided by Foucauldian methodologies, can provide a powerful lens through which to critically assess the impacts of human rights law and discourse in practice.

The final two chapters each consider the utility of human rights for criminology within the context of neoliberal globalization. Raymond Michalowski traces the historic deployment of human rights concepts in the study of state-corporate crime, arguing that it is possible to combine an appreciation of the systemic character of actions produced by complex networks of actors with a concern for the harms that result for individual human beings. Such a perspective is needed, he claims, because of structural changes associated with neoliberal globalization that alter the relationship between corporations, states and citizens. Hogg’s chapter deals with the implications of globalization for criminology as a whole, and considers the role that human rights are likely to play within a globalizing world and discipline. Adopting a wide historical lens, he sees globalization as a catalyst for an increasing convergence between human rights and criminology, notably through a broadening of the criminological gaze to recognize major crimes, often committed by states, which concern all of humanity.

All the authors adopt an aspirational and non-legalistic view of human rights as standards to be achieved through social pressure and political struggle, and as analytical tools to be deployed, where appropriate, alongside other theoretical perspectives and methodological devices. They show us that reference to human rights can bring a normative dimension to a structural analysis, or add a positive agenda to an exercise in critique that may otherwise end in a quagmire of negativity. Whatever we may think about the current standing of human rights within the world, it seems that they are likely to remain both topical and contentious within criminology.

1
Turning to human rights

Criminology past and future

Thérèse Murphy and Noel Whitty

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Hope is a concept not usually associated with academic criminology. A long tradition of ‘miserablism’ (Brown 2013, p. 27) within the field has tended to block and undermine attempts to imagine ways forward. Ian Loader and Richard Sparks have captured this sensibility in blunt terms:

[M]uch criminological thinking is either rather glum and fatalistic, or else excitedly apocalyptic, in content and tone. Neither of those registers are the most helpful or incisive ones with which to think about the future.

(Loader and Sparks forthcoming 2017)

These registers, presumably, also influence how and whether criminology thinks about its past. The publication, therefore, of a Handbook of criminology and – and here is the novelty – human rights is a moment of some significance. It raises questions that we want to explore in this chapter: in particular, what does its emergence say about academic criminology,¹ both historically and looking to the future?

Should we, for instance, expect the handbook ‘in content and tone’ to reflect the very different criminological histories of engagement with – and, more frequently, avoidance and repudiation of – human rights? Are some (most?) perspectives likely to be contemporary in orientation, evidencing a recognition of the quotidian relevance of rights and encompassing, in some cases, enthusiasm about the potential of rights discourses in criminological contexts? Also, what sources are being drawn upon to make such assessments? In short, where is academic criminology choosing to get its human rights knowledges from, what rights knowledges is it producing itself, and to what ends are these knowledges being put?

At one time, normative approaches from law and philosophy dominated understandings of human rights: today, by contrast, a wide range of disciplinary sources and methods on rights are available for evaluation, appropriation and adaptation (Murphy and Whitty 2013, p. 580). But if it is true that the criminological field is defined by a still-reluctant relationship with its legal counterpart (Zedner 2011, p. 277), how convincing are its engagements with human rights going to be? Isn’t it the case that a significant part of the story – the realities of human rights law, institutions and actors – will be left unexplored? And, if the legal field is recognized as relevant but then treated as a lumpen mass, such that the interplay between bodies of law (between, for example, international, national and local norms) is ignored, is the ability to gauge the proper place of the legal field not inevitably weakened?

Unless, of course, what is most attractive to some criminologists about rights discourses is their potential usefulness in enhancing an evidence base (‘violations’) and condemnatory language (‘victims’), or their potential role in reinforcing theoretical and ideological positions – that is, to generate new (or boost old) forms of criminological awareness. Alternatively, is criminology across its varied terrain increasingly aligning itself with human rights advocacy (and deploying legal resources?), or is it systematically turning to human rights as an object of enquiry – all with implications for its understandings of scholar, activist and policy advisor? In other words, how much of a Handbook of criminology and human rights is a journey down familiar criminological pathways? And how much is a departure in focus, methodology and tone, or even an explicit breaking with (or, perhaps, a reconnecting with) aspects of criminology’s past (Radzinowicz 1961)? Most interestingly of all, what is distinctive about criminology doing human rights?

Present-day patterns

In addressing these questions, we start with a brief outline of what we consider to be the four principal, contemporary criminological engagements with human rights. The first of these, which we shall call legal reformist, builds upon a longstanding regard for notions of rights within criminal law and criminal justice (Morris 1958, Ashworth 1988). Today it continues across a range of contributions to criminal justice bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), university teaching, political campaigning and scholarship (Morgan and Evans 2001, Finnane 2008, Zedner 2003, 2009). In recent years, the institutionalization and internationalization of human rights law has significantly affected the manner in which a range of criminal justice policies are critiqued (Brown and Wilkie 2002, Muncie 2008, van Zyl Smit and Snacken 2009). A further catalyst has been the extension, and the abuse, of state power in the aftermath of 9/11. Common cause between criminologists and lawyers is now much more apparent, with shared agendas of activism, litigation and scholarship – all motivated by the liberalizing potential of human rights (Brysk and Shafir 2007, Goold and Lazarus 2007).

The second present-day engagement flows from work on state crimes and encompasses two, very distinct, strands. The first draws on a tradition of historic distrust of state power and the alleged hegemonic nature of rights regimes. Paradoxically, however, it uses human rights reports by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch in order to better evidence the harms caused by both state and corporate power. While various theoretical positions are reflected within state crimes scholarship, a common feature is the reduction of human rights to the issue of violations (Stanley 2007, Green and Ward 2009, Scraton and McCulloch 2009, Welch 2009). Another feature is the belief in the power of exposure of rights violations: cultural criminology, for instance, by its focus on atrocity images, is said to put ‘the ‘visual human into the concept of human rights, helping to produce a moral obligation to act’ (Morrison 2010, p. 193).

The second state-crimes strand, ‘genocide criminology’, is very different in focus and method. Its explicit aim is that the field of criminology should be extended to ‘studies of international justice … war and international conflict’ (Levi and Hagan 2011, pp. 36–7), notably for the purposes of providing genocide or war crimes statistics in criminal prosecutions. Criminology here is being closely allied with international criminal law and associated exercises of state power (which may include satellite surveillance and intervention to arrest suspects) – and a sense of urgency is pervasive: ‘There is no time to lose’ (Savelsber...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Criminology and human rights: An introduction
• Part I Taking stock of human rights within criminology
• Part II Law, regulation and governance through a human rights lens
• Part III Human rights in the promotion of peace, community safety and social justice
• Part IV Policing and human rights
• Part V Human rights and the justice process
• Part VI Human rights and penality
• Index