Youth justice reform: redressing age discrimination against children?

This article considers whether the system of reprimands and final warnings in the youth justice system in England and Wales constitutes age discrimination for the purposes of human rights law. Whilst much youth justice discourse has addressed the use of diversionary measures that steer children away from formal justice processes, little attention has been paid to measures which negatively discriminate against children, in comparison to adults, without reasonable justification. The discussion contextualizes the issue within discourses on the sociology of childhood and youth justice, and considers why there is a general reluctance to recognize children as ‘victims’ of age discrimination.

EU membership of the WTO: international trade disputes and judicial protection of individuals by EU Courts

The European Union (EU) is embedded in a pluralistic legal context because of the EU and its Member States’ treaty memberships and domestic laws. Where EU conduct has implications for both the EU’s international trade relations and the legal position of individual traders, it possibly affects EU and its Member States’ obligations under the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO law) as well as the Union’s own multi-layered constitutional legal order. The present paper analyses the way in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) accommodates WTO and EU law in the context of international trade disputes triggered by the EU. Given the ECJ’s denial of direct effect of WTO law in principle, the paper focuses on the protection of rights and remedies conferred by EU law. It assesses the implications of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) – which tolerates the acceptance of retaliatory measures constraining traders’ activities in sectors different from those subject to the original trade dispute (Bananas and Hormones cases) – for the protection of ‘retaliation victims’. The paper concludes that governmental discretion conferred by WTO law has not affected the applicability of EU constitutional law but possibly shapes the actual scope of EU rights and remedies where such discretion is exercised in the EU’s general interest.

Artisanal mining's democratizing directions and deviations

Artisanal miners have tended to be portrayed in the literature and media as people who work hard and play hard, not infrequently depicted as ‘rough diamonds’ likely to cross the boundaries of appropriate behaviour through pursuit of wealth and flamboyant living, often at the cost of local environmental damage. A popular alternative image is that of marginalised labourers, driven by poverty to toil in harsh conditions and pursuing mining livelihoods in the face of national governments and large-scale mining companies’ subversion of their land and mineral rights. Both views reflect partial realities, but are inclined to exaggerate the position of miners as mischief-making rogues or victims. Through documentation of the multi-faceted nature of Tanzanian artisanal miners’ work and home lives during the country’s on-going economic mineralisation, we endeavour to convey a balanced rendering of their aspirations, occupational identity and social ties. Our emphasis is on their working lives as artisans, how they organise themselves and contend with the risks of their occupation, including their engagement with government policy and large-scale mining interests.

Direct and indirect effects of pathological gambling on risk attitudes

We study individual decision making in a lottery-choice task performed by three different populations: gamblers under psychological treatment ("addicts"), gamblers’ spouses ("victims"), and people who are neither gamblers or gamblers’ spouses ("normals"). We find that addicts are willing to take less risk than normals, but the difference is smaller as a gambler’s time under treatment increases. The large majority of victims report themselves unwilling to take any risk at all. However, addicts in the first year of treatment react more than other addicts to the different values of the risk-return parameter.

Does political proximity to the U.S. cause terror?

We analyze the impact of political proximity to the United States on the occurrence and severity of terror. Employing panel data for 116 countries over the period 1975–2001 we find that countries voting in line with the U.S. are victims of more and deadlier attacks.

Snakebite and its socio-economic impact on the rural population of Tamil Nadu, India

BACKGROUND: Snakebite represents a significant health issue worldwide, affecting several million people each year with as many as 95,000 deaths. India is considered to be the country most affected, but much remains unknown about snakebite incidence in this country, its socio-economic impact and how snakebite management could be improved. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We conducted a study within rural villages in Tamil Nadu, India, which combines a household survey (28,494 people) of snakebite incidence with a more detailed survey of victims in order to understand the health and socio-economic effects of the bite, the treatments obtained and their views about future improvements. Our survey suggests that snakebite incidence is higher than previously reported. 3.9% of those surveyed had suffered from snakebite and the number of deaths corresponds to 0.45% of the population. The socio-economic impact of this is very considerable in terms of the treatment costs and the long-term effects on the health and ability of survivors to work. To reduce this, the victims recommended improvements to the accessibility and affordability of antivenom treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Snakebite has a considerable and disproportionate impact on rural populations, particularly in South Asia. This study provides an incentive for researchers and the public to work together to reduce the incidence and improve the outcomes for snake bite victims and their families.

Reply to Christine Sylvester, “Terro rWars: Boston Iraq”: An examination of differences between counter-terrorism and war as seen through the Iraqi experience of occupation

This response examines what is overlooked in Sylvester’s analysis of similarities between the US police security response to the Boston marathon bombings (2013) and Kevin Powers’ fictionalized account of the US war operations in Al Tafar, Iraq (2004) and evaluates the consequences for our understanding of contemporary war. This is done by highlighting differences between the experience of residents in Boston and the (real) town of Tal Afar, key among them the insecurity, fear and calamity that result from the distinct political realities in these locations. The experience of war from the perspective of the victims adds an important dimension to the debate over the changing nature of war. At a time that is marked by an unprecedented level of technologization and visual mediation, it brings into focus the fragmentary and often one-sided evidence on which our knowledge of contemporary war is based. It reminds us to ask not only what we know about war, but how we know it.

Graceful remedies: understanding grace in the Catholic Church's treatment of clerical child sexual abuse

This article examines advocacy of Catholic restorative justice for clerical child sexual abuse from the standpoint of feminist criminological critiques of the use of restorative mediation in sexual offence cases. In particular, it questions the Catholic invocation of grace and forgiveness of survivors of abuse in light of critical feminist concerns about the exploitation of emotions in restorative practices, especially in regard to sexual and other gender-based offences. In the context of sexual abuse, the Catholic appeal to grace has the potential for turning into an extraordinary demand made of victims not only to rehabilitate offenders and the church in the eyes of the community, but also to work towards the spiritual absolution of the abuser. This unique feature of Catholic-oriented restorative justice raises important concerns in terms of feminist critiques of the risk of abuses of power within mediation, and is also incompatible with orthodox restorative justice theory, which, although it advocates a ‘spiritual’ response to crime, is concerned foremost with the rights, needs and experiences of victims.

Contribution to collective harms and responsibility

In the present contribution, I discuss the claim, endorsed by a number of authors, that contributing to a collective harm is the ground for special responsibilities to the victims of that harm. Contributors should, between them, cover the costs of the harms they have inflicted, at least if those harms would otherwise be rights-violating. I raise some doubts about the generality of this principle before moving on to sketch a framework for thinking about liability for the costs of harms in general. This framework uses a contractualist framework to build an account of how to think about liability for costs on the basis of the presumably attractive thought that individual agents should have as much control over their liabilities as is compatible with others having like control. I then use that framework to suggest that liability on the basis of contribution should be restricted to cases in which the contributors could have avoided their contribution relatively costlessly, in which meeting the liability is not crippling for them, and in which such a liability would not have chilling effects, either on them or on third parties. This account of the grounds for contributory liability also has the advantage of avoiding a number of awkward questions about what counts as a contribution by shifting the issue away from often unanswerable questions about the precise causal genesis of some harm or other. Instead, control over conduct, which plausibly has some relation to the harm, becomes crucial. On the basis of this account, I then investigate whether a number of uses of the contributory principle are entirely appropriate. I argue that contributory liability is not appropriate for cases of collective harms committed by coordinated groups in the way that, for example, Iris Marion Young and Thomas Pogge have suggested and that further investigation of how members of such groups may be liable will be needed.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei? A closer look at the ‘public opinion’ argument for retention

The Japanese government’s justification for retaining the death penalty is that abolition would erode the legitimacy of and public trust in the criminal justice system, leading to victims’ families taking justice into their own hands. This justification is based on the results of a regularly administered public opinion survey, which is said to show strong public support for the death penalty. However, a close analysis of the results of the 2014 survey fails to validate this claim. Just over a third of respondents were committed to retaining the death penalty at all costs, while the rest accepted the possibility of future abolition, with some of them seeing this as contingent on the introduction of life imprisonment without parole as an alternative sentence. These findings hardly describe a society that expects the strict application of the death penalty and whose trust in justice depends on the government’s commitment to retaining it. My reading of the 2014 survey is that the Japanese public is ready to embrace abolition. Japan, after all, is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which calls on states not to delay or prevent abolition, so this should be welcome news for the Japanese government!

Generic intertextuality in online social activism: the case of the It Gets Better project

The It Gets Better project has been held up as a model of successful social media activism. This article explores how narrators of It Gets Better videos make use of generic intertextuality, strategically combining the canonical narrative genres of the exemplum, the testimony, and the confession in a way that allows them to claim ‘textual authority’ and to make available multiple moral positions for themselves and their listeners. This strategy is further facilitated by the ambiguous participation frameworks associated with digital media, which make it possible for storytellers to tell different kinds of stories to different kinds of listeners at the same time, to simultaneously comfort the victims of anti-gay violence, confront its perpetrators, and elicit sympathy from ‘onlookers’. This analysis highlights the potential of new practices of online storytelling for social activism, and challenges notions that new media are contributing to the demise of common narrative traditions.

Regurgitated bodies: presenting and representing trauma in 'The Act of Killing'

Focusing on The Act of Killing, this chapter examines how an “ethics of realism” operates on three key cinematic arenas: genre, authorship and spectatorship. As far as genre is concerned, the film’s realist commitment emerges from where it is least expected, namely from Hollywood genres, such as the musical, the film noir and the western, which are used as documentary, that is to say, as a fantasy realm where perpetrators can confess to their crimes without restraints or fear of punishment, but which nonetheless retains the evidentiary weight of the audiovisual medium. Authorship, in turn, translates as Oppenheimer’s unmistakable auteur signature through his role of self-confessed “infiltrator” who disguises as a sympathiser of the criminals in order to gain first-hand access to the full picture of their acts. One of them, the protagonist Anwar Congo, is clearly affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, and his repetitive reliving of his killings is made to flare up in front of the camera so as to bring back the dead to the present time in their material reality, through his own body, including a harrowing scene of the actor’s unpredictable and uncontrollable retching as he re-enacts the killing of his victims through strangulation. Finally, in the realm of spectatorship, the usual process of illusionistic identification on the part of the spectator is turned onto its head by means of disguising these criminals as amateur filmmakers, led to shoot, act within, and then watch their own film within the film so as to force them to experience beyond any illusion the suffering they had caused.