Freedom and Criminal Responsibility in the Age of Pound: An Essay on Criminal Justice

Responsibility problems for criminal justice

It has been argued that empirical science undermines the claim that people can deserve punishment, and that the criminal justice system therefore ought to be radically reformed. Such arguments lose their force if moral responsibility and desert do not depend on what caused the action, but on the agent’s choice. We solve one problem for the justification of the criminal justice system, but creat...

The Age of Criminal Responsibility

ISSN 0817-8542 ISBN 0 642 241 98 8 One of the most difficult areas of criminal justice policy lies in providing appropriate legal mechanisms to reflect the transition from the age of childhood innocence through to maturity and full responsibility under the criminal law. Along with specialised institutions such as Children’s Courts and juvenile detention centres, specific legal rules have been d...

Criminal Justice in the Information Age

On Criminal Responsibility

\ The records of our criminal jurisprudence are fertile in instances in which the most atrocious crimes are perpetrated 1^ persons who are absolved from responsibility on the ground of insanity. The mind is horrified at the tale of a mother cutting the throats of her helpless infants as they lie slumbering in their beds, or of another parent hurrying away her progeny in the darkness of the nigh...

Criminal Responsibility

are not always evident to the man in the street and are particularly easy to neglect when involved in the highly sensational atmosphere of a murder trial; this is of course particularly so if the details are horrific or sexual or both and if a plea of insanity is raised in defence. It may therefore be helpful to re-state the points at issue. The first point is that lawyers and doctors talk in d...