For a Genealogy of International Criminal Justice: Paradoxes and Ambiguities

This article aims to consider the role for a critical criminology outside the national dimension, highlighting its continuities with studies in the critical tradition which have suggested the need to address State criminality and criminogenic structures more in general, but also suggesting a critique of international criminal law as a governmentality project. It reconstructs the genealogy of the international criminal justice system, following on from Schmitt and other well known authors, but it focuses in specific on its paradoxes, contradictions and ambiguities rather than its purely political effect.The authors argue that critical criminologists should engage with the international dimension of crime and control and approach this venture of a international criminal justice system as the possibility of “telling the truth” about State atrocities without missing on using strategically the category of human rights and law to bring to the fore minoritarian interests which are usually denied by power discourses and economic forces.

DAWN L. ROTHE, ISABEL SCHOULTZ

International Criminal Justice: A Deterrent for Crimes of the State?

Criminology is not just focused on explaining the etiological factors behind crime commission; ultimately the goal is to find and empirically assess policies to control it. A criminology of the State is no different. Over the course of the past two decades, a growing number of scholars of State crime have devoted attention to and research on the issues of controls, yet, there have been relatively few articles that solely focus on the issue of international criminal justice and its ability, or lack thereof, to have a deterrent effect. However, many actors within the field of international criminal justice have heralded the deterrent power of the international criminal justice system and its ability to remove impunity for violations of international criminal law. Likewise, many practitioners and scholars routinely assume a probability at best, to an assumption of sureness, of a powerful deterrent effect for those in high ranking positions, including heads of State, that violate international criminal law. This article examines the potential deterrent effect of international criminal justice, as it pertains to State crime, which is grounded in criminological insights. To do so, we present an overview of the common assumptions of and criminological thinking in deterrence models. This is followed by highlighting those factors most strongly associated with a deterrent effect with State criminality and  international criminal justice. The article concludes with a critical examination of the potential of deterrence and how it fails to generate the effects for heads of State and other high ranking officials which so many international public actors, including the international criminal justice system, claims.

ATHANASIOS CHOULIARAS

Towards a Prospective Criminology of the International Criminal Justice System: Prerequisites and Objectives

The main objective of the paper is to theorize on the prospective role of criminology with espect to the emergent international criminal justice system, epitomized by the creation of the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). In order to do so, we opt for a combined approach consisting in the contrast of the criminological theory of State crime with the rising theory of international crime in the domain of international criminal law. In this context, the first part summarizes the epistemological premises and the basic points of the criminological theories on State crime. Despite the unanimity among criminologists that the idea-matrix of abuse of power and the category of “crimes of the powerful” offer the broader conceptual framework of the criminology of State crime, there is an open debate on the criterion employed for the definition of the latter concept (harm, deviance, law). Notwithstanding the variety of approaches, one could assert that they all converge on the conclusion that the most important traits of State crime are its political nature (macro-level) and organizational dimension (meso-level). These elements on the one hand are corroborated by while on the other hand explain the eruption of collective violence at societal level, which results in the commission of massive crimes, analyzed as instances of conformity instead of deviancy, i.e. as crimes of obedience (micro-level). The second part seeks to delimit the subject matter by alluding to the concept of core international crime arising from the normative system of the ICC. More particular, taking into consideration the general qualitative traits of the crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the ICC (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression), the provision of certain criteria of admissibility of a case before the ICC as well as the gravity threshold and the inclusion of contextual elements in each criminal type, one could identify three constitutive elements of core international crime: international dimension, collective nature and political facet. Finally, the third part constitutes an attempt at synthesis, setting forth a proposal for a comprehensive theory of international criminality based on the integrated model of criminal sciences in the field of international criminal justice. The core aim of such an approach is not to downplay the existing differences between the criminological concept of State crime and the penal concept of core international crime, but to highlight common points in order to make some proposals from a criminal policy perspective.

JAMES W. E. SHEPTYCKI

Some Sociological Reflections on Transnational Crime and Transnational Policing

This essay seeks to connect the sociological phenomena of transnational crime and transnational policing through a critical discussion of the terms used to describe them. It argues that authorized discourses regarding transnational crime are selective and partial and that this results in two kinds of failure. It is a positive failure insofar as increasing policing power in response to a global crime panic comes at the expense of civil liberties and human rights. It is a negative failure because the transnational policing capacity that has been developed is unable to respond to the criminological consequences that are a real, albeit negative, aspect of globalization. Sociologically speaking, the surveillant assemblage of the emergent global police security-complex is an awesome and unaccountable power legitimitated on the basis of specified folkdevils. However, and in spite of well-publicized claims to success, due to its own internal organizational pathologies and institutional fragmentation, the police security-complex is capricious. The essay concludes by arguing that critical the examination of the concepts that constitute transnational crime and policing is a crucial contribution to the sociological understanding of the global system and its governance.

RUTH JAMIESON

On War as an Object of Analysis for Criminologists

This paper offers a critical appraisal and overview of criminology’s recent engagement with the myriad discursive, material and experiential dimensions of the war/crime/political violence relationship and argues that a number of emerging criminologies have the capacity to advance our understanding of the nexus between contemporary war/political violence and crime. It suggests that recent criminological scholarship on the discursive and practical aspects of war/political violence (for example, cultural criminology on genocide and suffering, on the war on terror, and other work on State crime, biopolitics, security, corruption, development, gender violence) together have the potential to take the study of war, crime and international justice beyond the entrenched legalism of contemporary international criminal justice and human rights scholarship that presumes to exhaust these questions (Agamben, 2002). The paper concludes by reiterating the necessity of getting beyond anachronistic conceptions of States, sovereignties and internationality and engaging in analyses of the war/crime/justice nexus with both passion (Morrison, 2006) and humility (McEvoy, 2007).