Lisa L. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190203542
- eISBN:
- 9780190203566
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190203542.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance, Comparative and Historical Sociology
This chapter argues that the literature on the politics of punishment generally, and on US exceptionalism specifically, suffers from insufficient attention to serious violence. It complicates ...
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This chapter argues that the literature on the politics of punishment generally, and on US exceptionalism specifically, suffers from insufficient attention to serious violence. It complicates conventional assumptions about democratic politics, mass publics, and crime. Drawing on three cases—the United Kingdom, the United States, and the state of Pennsylvania—this chapter illustrates that rates of violence matter for political attention to crime. It also shows that the politicization of crime does not always lead to a singular focus on punishment and that this politicization in the United States is shaped by both high rates of violence and distinctive institutional dynamics that decouple crime from related social and economic insecurities. The consequence is an (exceptional) political process in the United States that makes it difficult for the polity to make the state pay for high rates of violence and the criminogenic conditions that give rise to them.Less
This chapter argues that the literature on the politics of punishment generally, and on US exceptionalism specifically, suffers from insufficient attention to serious violence. It complicates conventional assumptions about democratic politics, mass publics, and crime. Drawing on three cases—the United Kingdom, the United States, and the state of Pennsylvania—this chapter illustrates that rates of violence matter for political attention to crime. It also shows that the politicization of crime does not always lead to a singular focus on punishment and that this politicization in the United States is shaped by both high rates of violence and distinctive institutional dynamics that decouple crime from related social and economic insecurities. The consequence is an (exceptional) political process in the United States that makes it difficult for the polity to make the state pay for high rates of violence and the criminogenic conditions that give rise to them.
David M. Doyle and Liam O'Callaghan
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620276
- eISBN:
- 9781789629545
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620276.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-Civil War period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, ...
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This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-Civil War period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, this book sheds light on the various social, legal and political contexts in which the death penalty operated and was discussed. In Ireland the death penalty served a dual function: as an instrument of punishment in the civilian criminal justice system, and as a weapon to combat periodic threats to the security of the state posed by the IRA. In closely examining cases dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts, this book elucidates ideas of class, gender, community and sanity and how these factors had an impact the administration of justice. The application of the death penalty also had a strong political dimension, most evident in the enactment of emergency legislation and the setting up of military courts specifically targeted at the IRA. As this book demonstrates, the civilian and the political strands converged in the story of the abolition of the death penalty in Ireland. Long after decision-makers accepted that the death penalty was no longer an acceptable punishment for ‘ordinary’ cases of murder, lingering anxieties about the threat of subversives dictated the pace of abolition and the scope of the relevant legislation.Less
This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-Civil War period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, this book sheds light on the various social, legal and political contexts in which the death penalty operated and was discussed. In Ireland the death penalty served a dual function: as an instrument of punishment in the civilian criminal justice system, and as a weapon to combat periodic threats to the security of the state posed by the IRA. In closely examining cases dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts, this book elucidates ideas of class, gender, community and sanity and how these factors had an impact the administration of justice. The application of the death penalty also had a strong political dimension, most evident in the enactment of emergency legislation and the setting up of military courts specifically targeted at the IRA. As this book demonstrates, the civilian and the political strands converged in the story of the abolition of the death penalty in Ireland. Long after decision-makers accepted that the death penalty was no longer an acceptable punishment for ‘ordinary’ cases of murder, lingering anxieties about the threat of subversives dictated the pace of abolition and the scope of the relevant legislation.
Charles Townshend
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198229780
- eISBN:
- 9780191678929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198229780.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter examines the coercion and the public order problem in Ireland during the 19th century. During this period, Ireland was administered in an exceptional way, more like a grand colony than ...
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This chapter examines the coercion and the public order problem in Ireland during the 19th century. During this period, Ireland was administered in an exceptional way, more like a grand colony than an integral part of the United Kingdom. Coercion was applied because English law was often unenforceable in Ireland due to passive or active resistance. Though the ordinary crime rate in Ireland was rather low, political crime had become uncomfortable for the English authorities. These crimes were not a function of direct political resistance but of intimidatory violence associated with land struggle.Less
This chapter examines the coercion and the public order problem in Ireland during the 19th century. During this period, Ireland was administered in an exceptional way, more like a grand colony than an integral part of the United Kingdom. Coercion was applied because English law was often unenforceable in Ireland due to passive or active resistance. Though the ordinary crime rate in Ireland was rather low, political crime had become uncomfortable for the English authorities. These crimes were not a function of direct political resistance but of intimidatory violence associated with land struggle.
Paul R. Gregory
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300134254
- eISBN:
- 9780300152784
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300134254.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This analysis of the workings of Soviet state security organs under Lenin and Stalin addresses a series of questions that have long resisted satisfactory answers. Why did political repression affect ...
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This analysis of the workings of Soviet state security organs under Lenin and Stalin addresses a series of questions that have long resisted satisfactory answers. Why did political repression affect so many people, most of them ordinary citizens? Why did it come in waves or cycles? Why were economic and petty crimes regarded as political crimes? What was the reason for relying on extra-judicial tribunals? And what motivated the extreme harshness of punishments, including the widespread use of the death penalty? Through an approach that synthesizes history and economics, the author develops systematic explanations for the way terror was applied, how terror agents were recruited, how they carried out their jobs, and how they were motivated. The book draws on extensive, recently opened archives of the Gulag administration, the Politburo, and state security agencies themselves to illuminate terror and repression in the Soviet Union as well as dictatorships in other times and places.Less
This analysis of the workings of Soviet state security organs under Lenin and Stalin addresses a series of questions that have long resisted satisfactory answers. Why did political repression affect so many people, most of them ordinary citizens? Why did it come in waves or cycles? Why were economic and petty crimes regarded as political crimes? What was the reason for relying on extra-judicial tribunals? And what motivated the extreme harshness of punishments, including the widespread use of the death penalty? Through an approach that synthesizes history and economics, the author develops systematic explanations for the way terror was applied, how terror agents were recruited, how they carried out their jobs, and how they were motivated. The book draws on extensive, recently opened archives of the Gulag administration, the Politburo, and state security agencies themselves to illuminate terror and repression in the Soviet Union as well as dictatorships in other times and places.
James Heinzen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300175257
- eISBN:
- 9780300224764
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300175257.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
As chapter 6 shows, in the years between the start of World War II and the death of Stalin, the Soviet regime relied on a network of secret informants in its efforts to halt what the regime ...
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As chapter 6 shows, in the years between the start of World War II and the death of Stalin, the Soviet regime relied on a network of secret informants in its efforts to halt what the regime considered to be a veritable epidemic of crimes against state property and the socialist economy. Alongside regular police work, the use of a vast informant network was the primary tool for uncovering the corrupt activities of Soviet officials. What were its strengths and weaknesses? Why did some people refuse to inform?Less
As chapter 6 shows, in the years between the start of World War II and the death of Stalin, the Soviet regime relied on a network of secret informants in its efforts to halt what the regime considered to be a veritable epidemic of crimes against state property and the socialist economy. Alongside regular police work, the use of a vast informant network was the primary tool for uncovering the corrupt activities of Soviet officials. What were its strengths and weaknesses? Why did some people refuse to inform?
James Heinzen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300175257
- eISBN:
- 9780300224764
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300175257.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter concludes that it was precisely in this period of postwar Stalinism that the party perfected the accusation of bribery as a weapon. Accusations of bribery became a non-violent tool to ...
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This chapter concludes that it was precisely in this period of postwar Stalinism that the party perfected the accusation of bribery as a weapon. Accusations of bribery became a non-violent tool to disgrace people in the post-mass-terror state. After the war, accusation of graft, one of the mundane realities of Russian life for centuries, became one of the party and procuracy’s preferred methods of targeting the leading legal institutions and other agencies and individuals. High court judges were accused not of political crimes under article 58 but of regular white-collar crimes. This change was something of an innovation in Stalinism. An accusation of corruption was an effective way of destroying a party member. The Procuracy sought evidence that would discredit judges both professionally—through accusations of selling their office, and personally—through accusations of “clannishness,” sexual “deviance,” or other moral corruption. In the absence of the pre-war practice of using of violence to punish entire categories of imagined criminals after the war, accusations of bribery served a critical purpose; not just to discredit people as trustworthy representatives of Soviet power, but also to destroy them as carriers of revolutionary truth. Bribery was a most effective charge, because its moral and political disgrace was total; it implied the corruption of the whole person. This chapter examines a bribery scandal in the Military Collegium and the military tribunals.Less
This chapter concludes that it was precisely in this period of postwar Stalinism that the party perfected the accusation of bribery as a weapon. Accusations of bribery became a non-violent tool to disgrace people in the post-mass-terror state. After the war, accusation of graft, one of the mundane realities of Russian life for centuries, became one of the party and procuracy’s preferred methods of targeting the leading legal institutions and other agencies and individuals. High court judges were accused not of political crimes under article 58 but of regular white-collar crimes. This change was something of an innovation in Stalinism. An accusation of corruption was an effective way of destroying a party member. The Procuracy sought evidence that would discredit judges both professionally—through accusations of selling their office, and personally—through accusations of “clannishness,” sexual “deviance,” or other moral corruption. In the absence of the pre-war practice of using of violence to punish entire categories of imagined criminals after the war, accusations of bribery served a critical purpose; not just to discredit people as trustworthy representatives of Soviet power, but also to destroy them as carriers of revolutionary truth. Bribery was a most effective charge, because its moral and political disgrace was total; it implied the corruption of the whole person. This chapter examines a bribery scandal in the Military Collegium and the military tribunals.
Mathieu Deflem
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199274710
- eISBN:
- 9780191699788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199274710.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
This chapter focuses on international collaboration in the policing of political crimes. It describes the earliest attempts to establish a veritable organization of international police cooperation ...
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This chapter focuses on international collaboration in the policing of political crimes. It describes the earliest attempts to establish a veritable organization of international police cooperation and the conditions that affected their success or failure. The one with the broadest international representation took place in Europe, specifically when the ‘First Congress of International Criminal Police’ was held in Monaco in 1914.Less
This chapter focuses on international collaboration in the policing of political crimes. It describes the earliest attempts to establish a veritable organization of international police cooperation and the conditions that affected their success or failure. The one with the broadest international representation took place in Europe, specifically when the ‘First Congress of International Criminal Police’ was held in Monaco in 1914.
