1,721,089 research outputs found
Street and State Discrimination: Thai Transgender Women in Europe
No full textThe large number of Thai transgender women (Kathoey) in Thailand and their visible roles in society often lead casual visitors to believe that Thailand is open and accepting of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) culture. Hence, it is common to hear Thailand described as gender tolerant and culturally sensitive. However, transgender women themselves beg to differ. They explain that the accumulated injustices of the Thai state on transgender rights – such as same sex marriage, social welfare, change of gender on identification card and structural employment discrimination - are the main push factor for Thai transgender women migration to Europe. This research presents state and street discrimination in Thailand and Europe. It also presents the visions of Europe that are commonly held by transgender women, visions that motivate some of them to migrate, and argues that these fantasies are romanticizing productions of western colonial influence. In Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and The UK, where the governments support equal rights of transgender people, Kathoeys find that they are allowed to legally marry, revel in professional progress, access social welfare and receive transgender legal protections. However compared to Thailand, Kathoeys experience more severe discrimination and transprejudice on street (social) level in Europe. This research studies the phenomenon of Thai transgender women migration to Europe and their perception before migrating and reality of living in Europe. It compares the levels of discrimination in Thailand and Europe and presents empirical data regarding street discrimination towards Kathoeys in Europe, despite state protection. The gap between European legal protections and the negative attitudes toward Kathoeys that continues to exist on the street demonstrates the power of universal and essentialist binary opposition: as hetero-normativity and cis-gender bodies are constructed to comprise normalcy and natural, Kathoeys and their transgendered bodies equate with deviancy and the unnatural. The Kathoey discourse of social acceptance through hetero-beauty myth is also theorized in an effort to understand Kathoey’s otherness, oppressed identity and inferiority issues in the Western world, which is influenced by hetero-normativity and post-colonial legacy. The study also investigates transgender prostitution industry in Europe and Thai transgender women’s narratives on European lives
Ineffective Legal Assistance: Redress for the Accused in Dutch Criminal Procedure and Compliance with ECHR Case Law
No full textThis research has tackled the two main research themes – ineffective assistance by counsel and its redress for at least its most serious manifestations in Dutch criminal proceedings – from as many relevant angles as possible. For the most part, this study has had to be chiefly exploratory (In Dutch: verkennend). This is despite earlier important work on positive norms that regulate counsel’s conduct in the criminal process in the Netherlands and defence as well as fair trial rights (also under the Convention) in more general terms. Consequently, original research was necessary in order to determine when Dutch criminal courts are confronted with ineffective assistance by counsel.1687 This determination has been made on the basis of Dutch law and case law which will be evaluated in this chapter for its compliance with external benchmarks of directly binding Convention minimum guarantees. Several internal benchmarks, inferred from comparisons to defences lodged by either unassisted or assisted accused persons, will also be taken into consideration, though less prominently. Against this background, this chapter sets out to answer the evaluative central research question, which is: "To what extent does the current approach to ineffective legal assistance and its redress for the accused in Dutch criminal procedure comply with the minimum guarantees regarding the right to an effective defence in a fair trial set by the Court?" Two descriptive sub-questions are integral to this overall question: what are those Convention minimum guarantees and what is the approach to ineffective legal assistance and its redress in Dutch criminal proceedings
Docile housewives or Empowered Entrepreneurs?: Gender, Fraud and Victimization Risks in the Context of Family-Related Migration in Germany
No full textThis dissertation explores how transnational marriage migration processes are viewed and interpreted by foreign spouses from economically weak countries who are currently residing in Germany. It identifies and examines possible risks that migration through the family reunification route could pose for women. By adopting an ethnographic approach, the current study extends previous research on “mail-order” brides by integrating and thoroughly analyzing interrelated criminological aspects pertaining to the topic of transnational marriages such as the victimization risks, interpersonal violence, fraudulent techniques in bi-national marriages and state surveillance, victim-offender overlap, and child custody litigations. Theoretically, the current study engages in debates on gender with feminist scholars and argues against the exploitation discourse frequently applied to women from developing countries who marry men from Western highly industrialized democracies. Instead, this study suggests viewing the issue of transnational marriages through the prism of Bourdieusian theory of capitals and empowering “erotic capital”. Methodologically, this dissertation shows how non-profit organizations could be used in research as gatekeepers and as a source of background information. The findings challenge the conventional notion of female marriage migrants as submissive dependents, suggesting a more nuanced approach based on the informants’ diverse backgrounds, qualifications, endeavors, and their manifold desires
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?: Undue Pharmaceutical Industry Influence and the Institutional Corruption of the Medical Profession – A Qualitative Analysis of Industry-Medicine Relationships in Hungary and the Netherlands
Full text linkPharmaceutical companies and the industry as a whole are gargantuan in size, multi-national in activity, successful in business, and vital to the global healthcare delivery structure, but these companies are as insidious as they are indispensable. The pharmaceutical industry possesses monopoly over a product of immense value – medication. Being small in size and big in demand make pharmaceuticals, and thus the pharmaceutical sector, ripe for deviance to emerge, and ‘Big Pharma’ as a criminogenic enterprise has become less conspiracy and more axiom. Much attention has been paid to crimes of pharmaceutical companies, but some authors claim that were it not for the contribution of doctors, these crimes could not be committed. Being the gatekeepers of human health, the profession of medicine is mandated by social contract, specialized knowledge, authority, and autonomy to promote patient interests in the face of industry financial gain, thereby acting as a countervailing power to industry interests which disregard patient needs. Not only has medicine failed to do so, but explanations are few and far between, tending to suggest that the abandonment of patient interests is an individual departure from codes of proper medical conduct – singling out a Dr Jekyll and proposing that he is converted to Mr Hyde. This thesis examines the proposition of physician culpability in industry criminality, but will challenge individual proclivities as the source of digression from the medical mandate, asking not only why or how doctors contribute to, but why the profession cannot curb industry malfeasance. By following the lifecycle of a pharmaceutical product and the process of delivery from laboratory to prescription, the relationships between industry and medicine are identified within the system of knowledge development of a pharmaceutical product: knowledge production (medical research and development), knowledge interpretation (evidence-based medicine), and knowledge application (informed clinical practice). It is in this system that industry-medicine relationships are formed, but also within which the interests of industry and medicine conflict. It will be argued that industry influence, and the inability of the medical profession to rein-in the interests of pharmaceutical companies, diverts and renders doctors incapable of achieving the institutional purpose of medicine. Employing qualitative research methodology, 83 interviews conducted in Hungary and the Netherlands between April 2015 and April 2017 construct the empirical backbone of the investigation of industry influence in medicine. Each account provided an interpretation and explanation of the realities of industry-medicine relationships, allowing for further exploration of literature, law, guidelines, and data used to support, verify, and illustrate the phenomena relayed by respondents. Favouring the view of embeddedness as an explanation of behaviour, this thesis presents a relational approach to the examination of undue industry influence and the institutional corruption of the medical profession
The punitive meanings of immigration control within the realm of criminal courts’ decision-making: An in-depth qualitative case-study of the Spanish crimmigration regime
No full textThe contemporary convergence between immigration control and criminal justice entails a substantial reconfiguration of immigration control decision-making processes. One of the most significant features of this conversion is the increasing intervention of the criminal judiciary in matters related to immigration control. Deportation can be in many cases a consequence of a criminal conviction for a considerable number of crimes, and bail or sentencing decisions can be influenced by the migratory status and the deportation likelihood of a defendant. Although empirical research upon the convergence between immigration and criminal law has rapidly grown in the last decade, there is still a gap in the literature regarding the judicial decision-making processes and determinants of immigration control within the realm of criminal courts. This research purports to contribute to the scholarly research on such aspects by conducting an in-depth qualitative case-study analysis of a specific court setting. This dissertation focuses on Spain given that its legal migration regime shares many of the substantial aspects of the phenomenon described by the crimmigration concept. Despite irregular migration is not a criminal offence in that country, immigration detention is authorised by criminal judges and there is a series of expulsion (deportation) pathways available within criminal proceedings. Spain is a relevant research location in this regard due to its crucial role at controlling the Southern border of the so-called ‘fortress Europe’. Drawing on 78 in-depth semi-structured interviews with judges, prosecutors, court personnel, defence attorneys and other legal professionals, as well as focused observation for a period of eight months, this thesis seeks to ascertain the punitive meanings attributed by criminal court actors to immigration control. This research relies on organisational, social-psychological, and cultural frameworks for explaining judicial decision-making by criminal courts, focusing on immigration detention and expulsion throughout the criminal proceeding, which are in general administrative procedures under judicial supervision by criminal courts. Whilst assuming that the convergence between immigration control and criminal justice is a contemporary mechanism for the social construction of the ‘criminal immigrant’, the main findings of this study are structured in two parts. The first delves into the idiosyncratic features of immigration detention decision-making, and the second into the meanings ascribed by court actors to so called pre-trial, sentencing and post-sentence expulsion. This analysis evidences that immigration detention decision-making is substantially determined by the convergence of bureaucratically patterned decisional mechanics and the intrinsic criminal justice cultural identity of criminal courts. This embodies Kafkaesque dynamics characterised by automation, thoughtlessness and dehumanisation in decision-making. Furthermore, this research reveals that expulsion is a court’s culturally constructed punishment, defined more by the meanings produced and attributed to it by court actors than by its formal legal categorisation. Specifically, this thesis contends that expulsion is assessed by court actors in terms of its suitability for attaining such traditional purposes of punishment as incapacitation, deterrence and retribution. Therefore, this research concludes that immigration detention and expulsion are substantially traversed by the constitutive cultural identity of criminal courts, which in turn determines their key procedural traits and decisional outcomes
Eigen schuld, ook in kinderschoenen: kan het de schadevergoeding doen verminderen?
Full text linkJonge kinderen zijn kwetsbaar en kunnen minder goed dan volwassenen anticiperen op de risico’s van het maatschappelijk verkeer. Vergt daarom krenking van hun eigen belang, dat bij kinderen vaker voorkomt en ook ernstiger gevolgen heeft, een andere benadering dan bij volwassenen? Kan aan kinderen eigen schuld aan het ontstaan van hun schade worden verweten, op gelijke wijze als aan volwassenen? Komt hun schade daarom deels voor eigen rekening? Anne Keirse en Brechtje Paijmans schetsen uitgebreid de ontwikkeling en toepassing van het leerstuk van eigen schuld (par. 2 en 3). De omstandigheid dat een benadeelde door zijn jeugdige leeftijd de gevolgen van zijn gedrag niet goed kan overzien, blijkt de toerekening krachtens artikel 6:101 BW niet in de weg te staan, maar heeft wel gevolgen voor de schadedeling die in het kader van dit artikel volgt. Dit wordt duidelijk geïllustreerd door de rechtspraak over de gevolgen van eigen schuld bij kinderen en tieners in het verkeer (par. 4 en 5), en vindt ook zijn weerslag in de rechtspraak over kinderen en tieners buiten het verkeer (par. 6 en 7). Keirse en Paijmans bespreken ten slotte ook de gevolgen van een eventuele bijdrage van ouders aan de schade van hun kind waarvoor een derde primair aansprakelijk is (par. 8). Zij concluderen (par. 9) dat met de correctie via de billijkheid een systeem voorhanden is waarmee in de praktijk voor alle gevallen van medeverantwoordelijkheid een rechtvaardige oplossing kan worden gevonden
Transparency and Legitimacy in Chinese Criminal Procedure: Beyond Adversarial Dogmas
No full textIn recent years, the legitimacy of China's criminal justice system has been increasingly challenged by the Chinese populace, in part due to the numerous exposed miscarriages of justice. The Chinese academic mainstream as well as the political and judicial authorities have looked towards the classical Anglo-American model of an adversarial criminal justice system to solve this problem. Reforms were subsequently introduced to add weight to court sessions and to provide external transparency of criminal trials, whilst curtailing the weight of pre-trial proceedings and the case file. Yet, these solutions have failed to restore the legitimacy of China's criminal justice. This book goes beyond adversarial dogmas and concentrates instead on internal transparency of criminal procedure, presupposing that in a criminal justice system such as that of China internal transparency of criminal procedure is a critical condition for external transparency and crucial to the achievement of legitimacy. The author proposes to nurture impartiality of public prosecutors and to emphasize internal transparency of criminal procedure. Prosecutorial control over the police and judicial checks on the procuratorates should be improved as well and active judicial investigation restored where necessary. External transparency, on the other hand, needs to be enhanced in a more cautious or internalized way
Criminaliteit onder Marokkaanse jongemannen in Nederland: speelt regionale herkomst een rol?
Full text linkIn de sociologie van migratie en criminaliteit worden hoge cijfers van geregistreerde misdaad bij jongemannen van de tweede generatie immigranten gewoonlijk toegeschreven aan sociale desorganisatie van de betreffende etnische groep en de zwakke sociaaleconomische positie die deze in het nieuwe land inneemt. Daar staat het vermoeden tegenover dat de oorzaken van de criminaliteit ook reeds in het land of de streek van herkomst moeten worden gezocht. Dit wordt onderkend in de importtheorie. Er zijn echter meestal geen empirische gegevens voorhanden om dit vermoeden te toetsen. In het geval van de Marokkaanse criminaliteit in Nederland bestaan zulke aanwijzingen wel. Er is etnografisch en pedagogisch onderzoek verricht bij kleine groepen van delinquente jongens waarbij een verklaring wordt gezocht in de regionale achtergrond (vooral van het platteland of het Rifgebergte) van de immigranten in Marokko. In dit artikel wordt nagegaan of deze aanwijzingen standhouden bij kwantitatief onderzoek naar de groep als geheel. De registratie van politiecontacten (ooit verdacht van een misdrijf) uit het HKS op persoonsniveau wordt in verband gebracht met persoonsgegevens uit het Stelsel van Sociaal-statistische Bestanden (SSB) van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, inclusief herkomstregio (van ouders). Met behulp van logistische regressieanalyse wordt aangetoond dat sociaaleconomische status in Nederland een zeer belangrijke voorspeller is voor crimineel gedrag, terwijl de invloed van regionale afkomst, direct of indirect via sociaaleconomische positie in Nederland, verwaarloosbaar is. Er bestaat op grond van deze studie geen reden om de gangbare theorie over het verband tussen migratie en misdaad te herzien
Cross-border evidence gathering: equality of arms within the EU?
No full textThe European Union (EU) has set the objective to develop an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, in which on the one hand freedom of movement is promoted and on the other hand a high level of security is ensured. The EU is therefore adopting measures to enhance international cooperation in criminal matters among the police and judicial authorities of its Member States. The adopted instruments concerning evidentiary matters, such as the gathering, freezing and/or confiscation of information and materials in another EU Member State, seem to serve the main purpose of assisting the authorities in investigating and prosecuting (cross-border) crime. This raises the question to what extent the defence is also given the possibility to gather – or to have gathered – information and materials in another EU Member State with the aim of preparing and presenting its case at trial and, in particular, whether the current (EU) legal framework on cross-border evidence gathering meets the requirements of the principle of equality of arms.
This thesis addresses this question by, first of all, discussing the concept of equality of arms, as enshrined in both Article 6 ECHR and Article 47 CFR. It explains to what extent this principle is applicable to cross-border or transnational criminal proceedings and whether it has an autonomous meaning within the EU. In addition, it discusses which requirements can be deduced from the principle in relation to the possibilities of the defence to gather evidence in another EU Member State to prepare and presents its case. Subsequently, the focus is on the development of the European legislation – from both the Council of Europe and the EU – regulating the procedure of cross-border evidence gathering over the last decades. The aim is to explain the position of the defence in this development and to what extent the European legislation gives opportunities to the defence to request the assistance of foreign authorities in obtaining specific information and materials in another EU Member State.
In order to understand how the European legislation is applied in practice by the EU Member States, this thesis includes a comparative study of three national jurisdictions: the Netherlands, England and Wales, and Italy. These three jurisdictions each represent a different criminal justice system, either more inquisitorial or adversarial in nature. The comparative study describes how a chosen jurisdiction interprets the principle of equality of arms. Furthermore, it examines to what extent the national jurisdiction allows the defence to carry out independent investigations abroad and how it gives the defence the opportunity to trigger the mechanism of international cooperation and to participate in the requested investigation.
Finally, this thesis also includes an analysis of the criminal justice system of the International Criminal Court. In this system evidence gathering depends most of the time on State cooperation and both the Prosecutor and the defence are allowed to conduct independent investigations and seek the assistance of States. It is therefore used as a source of inspiration for potential changes of the EU legislation on cross-border evidence gathering
De terugkeer van de 'kinderlijke delinquent'?: Wisselende kindbeelden in een eeuw jeugdstrafrecht
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