Under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, degrading treatment and punishment is absolutely prohibited. This paper examines the nature of and wrong inherent in treatment and punishment of this kind. Cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) as amounting to degrading treatment and punishment under Article 3 include instances of interrogation, conditions of confinement, corporal punishment, strip searches, and a failure to provide adequate health care. The Court acknowledges the degradation inherent in imprisonment generally, and does not consider this to be in violation of Article 3, but it also identifies a threshold at which degradation is so severe as to render impermissible punishments that cross this threshold. I offer an account of the Court's conception of impermissible degradation as a symbolic dignitary harm. The victims are treated as inferior, as if they do not possess the status owed to human beings, neither treated with dignity nor given the respect owed to dignity. Degradation is a relational concept: the victim is brought down in the eyes of others following treatment motivated by the intention to degrade, or treatment which has a degrading effect. This, so I will argue, is the best account of the concept of degradation as deployed by the Court when determining punishments as in violation of Article 3.
Essay| April 01 2021 The Kiwi Way: New Zealand’s Approach to the Exclusion in Criminal Trials of Evidence Improperly Obtained by the Police Scott Optican Scott Optican Associate Professor, The University of Auckland Faculty of Law, New Zealand. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar New Criminal Law Review (2021) 24 (2): 254–270. https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2021.24.2.254 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Scott Optican; The Kiwi Way: New Zealand’s Approach to the Exclusion in Criminal Trials of Evidence Improperly Obtained by the Police. New Criminal Law Review 1 April 2021; 24 (2): 254–270. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2021.24.2.254 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentNew Criminal Law Review Search Keywords: criminal evidence, criminal trials, exclusion of evidence, New Zealand, Bill of Rights, comparative law This content is only available via PDF. © 2021 by The Regents of the University of California2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
Although an offender's conduct before and during the crime is the traditional focus of criminal law and sentencing rules, an examination of post-offense conduct can also be important in promoting criminal justice goals. After the crime, different offenders make different choices and have different experiences, and those differences can suggest appropriately different treatment by judges, correctional officials, probation and parole supervisors, and other decision makers in the criminal justice system. Positive post-offense conduct ought to be acknowledged and rewarded, not only to encourage it but also as a matter of fair and just treatment. This essay describes four kinds of positive post-offense conduct that merit special recognition and preferential treatment: the responsible offender, who avoids further deceit and damage to others during the process leading to conviction; the debt-paid offender, who suffers the full punishment deserved (according to true principles of justice rather than the sentence actually imposed); the reformed offender, who takes affirmative steps to leave criminality behind; and the redeemed offender, who out of genuine remorse tries to atone for the offense. The essay considers how one might operationalize a system for giving special accommodation to such offenders. Positive post-offense conduct might be rewarded, for example, through the selection and shaping of sanctioning methods, through giving preference in access to education, training, treatment, and other programs, and through elimination or restriction of collateral consequences of conviction that continue after the sentence is completed.
This study looks at the principles that shape the structure of the whole of Thai criminal procedure law. It examines how the search for truth is attempted to be reconciled with the idea of a fair trial or procedural fairness. The conflict between the search for truth on the one hand and guaranteeing procedural rights of the accused on the other is particularly problematic in the Thai context. Thai law affirms that some evidence cannot be admissible if it is obtained by a violation of certain procedural norms. At the same time, the law allows judges to admit some unlawfully obtained evidence in the interest of justice. The conflict between various legal norms cannot be solved without permitting judges to exercise broad discretion in striking the right balance between discovering the true facts and protecting the rights of the accused. Thai legal education and practice does not allow a broad judicial discretion in accepting or rejecting evidence on the grounds that it was obtained unlawfully. As a result, there is an attempt to build a sophisticated system of rules to accommodate the interests of justice and fairness in different situations. This system, however, lacks clarity and consistency.
“Limiting retributivists” believe that the vagueness of retributive proportionality represents a moral opportunity. They maintain that the state can permissibly harm an offender for the sake of crime prevention and other nonretributive goods, so long as the sentence resides within the broad range of retributively “not undeserved” punishments. However, in this essay, I argue that retributivism can justify only the least harmful sentence within such a range. To impose a sentence beyond this minimum would be cruel from a retributive perspective. It would harm an offender to a greater degree without thereby increasing the realization of our retributivist ends. Thus, if our nonretributive policy aims required a harsher sentence, the offender’s retributive desert could not provide the rationale, and we would need another theory that explains why, if at all, harming an offender as a means of realizing the desired nonretributive good is permissible.
