Exploring the Influence of Reporting Delay on Criminal Justice Outcomes: Comparing Child and Adult Reporters of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Delay between disclosure and reporting child sexual abuse is common and has significant implications for the prosecution of such offenses. While we might expect the relationship to be a linear one with longer delay reducing the likelihood of prosecution, the present study confirms a more complex interaction. Utilizing data from 2,079 police records in Northern Ireland, the study investigated the impact of reporting delay on pretrial criminal justice outcomes for child and adult reporters of child sexual abuse. While teenagers were found to be the group most disadvantaged by reporting delay, increased delay actually appeared advantageous for some groups, notably adult females reporting offenses that occurred when they were 0 to 6 years old. Conversely, adult males reporting child sexual abuse did not appear to benefit from increased delay, suggesting both an adult and gender bias within decision-making processes. The implications for future research are discussed. 

Using Comparative Reasoning in Human Rights Adjudication:The Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights Compared

This article examines the relationship between the methods that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) use to decide disputes that involve ‘human’ or ‘fundamental’ rights claims, and the substantive outcomes that result from the use of these particular methods. It has a limited aim: in attempting to understand the interrelationship between human rights methodology and human rights outcomes, it considers primarily the use of ‘comparative reasoning’ in ‘human’ and ‘fundamental’ rights claims by these courts. It is not primarily concerned with examining the extent to which the use of comparative reasoning is based on an appropriate methodology or whether there is a persuasive normative theory underpinning the use of comparative reasoning. The issues considered in this chapter do some of the groundwork, however, that is necessary in order to address these methodological and normative questions.

Young People’s Offending Careers and Criminal Justice Contact: A Case for Social Justice

This article draws on an analysis of young people’s offending careers. The research was initiated against a backdrop of changing discourse around youth justice in Ireland with a shift towards prevention of offending and diversion from the criminal justice system. Locating crime and criminal justice contact within a biographical context indicated that participants’ offending, and lives generally, was bound up in marginalized transitions to adulthood, and embedded within social and economic environments characterized by high deprivation. The findings support a further shift in focus towards addressing social injustice as a necessary prerequisite to tackle the origins of youth offending.

Sporting Justice: An Arbitrator's Perspective

Drawing on my experience of a number of sports dispute resolution tribunals in the UK and Ireland (such as Sports Resolutions UK; Just Sport Ireland; the Football Association of Ireland’s Disciplinary Panel and the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Dispute Resolution Authority) I intend to use this paper to review the legal arguments typically made in sports-related arbitrations. These points of interest can be summarised as a series of three questions: the fairness question; the liability question; the penalty question.

In answer to the fairness question, the aim is to give a brief outline on best practice in establishing a "fair" sports disciplinary tribunal. The answer, I believe, is always twofold in nature: first, and to paraphrase Lord Steyn in R v Secretary of State For The Home Department, Ex Parte Daly [2001] UKHL 26 at [28] "in law, context is everything" – translated into the present matter, this means that in sports disciplinary cases, the more serious the charges against the individual (in terms of reputational damage, economic impact and/or length of sanction); the more tightly wrapped the procedural safeguards surrounding any subsequent disciplinary hearing must be. A fair disciplinary system will be discussed in the context of the principles laid down in Article 8 of the World Anti-Doping Code which, in effect, acts as sport’s Article 6 of the ECHR on a right to a fair trial.

Following on from the above, in the 60 or so sports arbitrations that I have heard, there are two further points of interest. First, the claim before the arbitral panel will often be framed in an argument that, for various reasons of substantive and procedural irregularity, the sanction imposed on the appellant should be quashed ("the liability"). Second, and in alternative, that the sanction imposed was wholly disproportionate ("the penalty").

The liability issue usually breaks down into two further questions. First, what is the nature of the legal duty upon a sports body in exercising its disciplinary remit? Second, to what extent does a de novo hearing on appeal cure any apparent defects in a hearing of first instance? The first issue often results in an arbitral panel debating the contra preferentum approach to the interpretation of a contested rule i.e., the sports body’s rules in question are so ambiguous that they should be interpreted in a manner to the detriment of the rule maker and in favour of the appellant. On the second matter, it now appears to be a general principle of sports law, administrative law and even human rights law that even if a violation of the principles of natural justice takes place at the first instance stage of a disciplinary process, they may be cured on de novo appeal. Authority for this approach can be found at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and in particular in CAS 2009/A/1920 FK Pobeda, Aleksandar Zabrcanec, Nikolce Zdraveski v UEFA at para 87.

The question on proportionality asks what, aside from precedent found within the decisions of the sports body in question, are the general legal principles against which a sanction by a sports disciplinary body can be benchmarked in order to ascertain whether it is disproportionate in length or even irrational in nature?

On the matter of (dis)proportionality of sanction, the debate is usually guided by the authority in Bradley v the Jockey Club [2004] EWHC 2164 (QB) and affirmed at [2005] EWCA Civ 1056. The Bradley principles on proportionality of sports-specific sanctions, recently cited with approval at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, will be examined in this presentation.

Finally, an interesting application of many of the above principles (and others such as the appropriate standard of proof in sports disciplinary procedures) can be made to recent match-fixing or corruption related hearings held by the British Horse Racing Authority, the integrity units of snooker and tennis, and at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Criminal Justice Reforms in Northern Ireland: The Agents of Change

This chapter examines who and what brought about the transformation in the criminal justice system of Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2015, seeking to pinpoint the critical moments which stimulated the reforms, how they were delivered, and through what processes they are now being maintained. It seeks to identify the key agents of change and considers whether it is possible to generalise from Northern Ireland’s experience so that other conflicted societies might benefit from the lessons learned.

Transitional Justice: Origins, Boundaries and Methods in Transitional Justice

Scholars and practitioners working in ‘transitional justice’ are concerned with remedies of accountability and redress in the aftermath of conflict and state repression. Transitional justice, it is argued, provides recognition of the rights of victims, promotes civic trust, and strengthens the democratic rule of law. As serious scholarship flourishes around this critical concept as never before, this new collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative reference work to map a vibrant site of research and reflection. In four volumes, Transitional Justice brings together foundational and the best and most influential cutting-edge materials, including key works produced before the term ‘transitional justice’ gained wide currency but which anticipate approaches now included under that rubric.

The collection covers themes such as: truth and history; acknowledgement, reconciliation, and forgiveness; retribution, restorative justice and reparations; and democracy, state-building, identity, and civil society

Transitional Justice: Conceptualising 'Transition'

Scholars and practitioners working in ‘transitional justice’ are concerned with remedies of accountability and redress in the aftermath of conflict and state repression. Transitional justice, it is argued, provides recognition of the rights of victims, promotes civic trust, and strengthens the democratic rule of law. As serious scholarship flourishes around this critical concept as never before, this new collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative reference work to map a vibrant site of research and reflection. In four volumes, Transitional Justice brings together foundational and the best and most influential cutting-edge materials, including key works produced before the term ‘transitional justice’ gained wide currency but which anticipate approaches now included under that rubric.

The collection covers themes such as: truth and history; acknowledgement, reconciliation, and forgiveness; retribution, restorative justice and reparations; and democracy, state-building, identity, and civil society

Administrative Justice in the United Kingdom

The article examines the concept of administrative justice and shows how this term does not lend itself to a singular definition, but it is generally associated with a more holistic approach to citizen redress against government in which judicial review is only one mechanism among many others. After identifying some of the primary mechanisms within the system of administrative justice (Consultation, Ombudsman, Tribunals) and showing how they interact with one another, the article outlines the main challenges that this system faces in an era of austerity. Indeed, the reduction of government spending on the mechanisms which facilitate administrative justice has the potential to hollow out the values that infuse administrative justice as a whole.

Beyond Criminal Justice: An anthology of abolitionist papers presented to conferences of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control over the past decade

Beyond Criminal Justice presents a vision of a future without brutal, authoritarian and repressive penal regimes. Many of the papers brought together here have been unavailable for more than two decades. Their republication indicates not only their continuing theoretical importance to abolitionist studies but also how they provide important insights into the nature and legitimacy of criminal processes in the here and now. Contributors highlight the human consequences of the harms of imprisonment, evidencing the hurt, injury and damage of penal incarceration across a number of different countries in Europe. Focusing on penal power and prisoner contestation to such power, the moral and political crises of imprisonment are laid bare. The contributors to Beyond Criminal Justice explore the urgent need for a coherent, rational and morally and politically sophisticated theoretical basis for penal abolitionism. Advocating a utopian imagination and at the same time practical solutions already implemented in countries around Europe - alongside grappling with controversial debates such as abolitionist responses to rape and sexual violence - the book steps outside of common sense assumptions regarding 'crime', punishment and 'criminal justice'. Beyond Criminal Justice will be of interest to students of criminology, zemiology, sociology, penology and critical legal studies as well as anyone interested in rethinking the problem of 'crime' and challenging the logic of the penal rationale.