Browsing by Subject "Crime"

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Open Access
A study of the legal framework for accountability of individuals for crimer against humanity and the role of the international law enforcement agencies.
(University of North Bengal, 2014) Ghosh, Satarupa; Chakraborty, Gangotri
The principle that individuals are and can be held criminally accountable for violations of the laws of war dates back to many years. However, it was only after World War II and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, set up to judge those German and Japanese military leaders accused of serious crimes during the war, that the idea of individual criminal responsibility for serious breaches of international law gained ground. In this thesis an attempt has made to trace the evolution of individual’s responsibility for crime against humanity, the present legal framework in national and international level and the role of various law enforcement agencies to deal with the problem. Evolution of the Problem: History is witness to the fact that wherever an individual or groups of individuals have become powerful, they have flagrantly tortured the weak and the defenseless. Even where power is legitimated and turned into a legally valid authority, abuse of power and torture of the weak and the defenseless has continued. In this back drop considerable legal mechanism has developed for the exercise of such raw power. An international crime has been broadly defined as “an act universally recognized as criminal, that is, an act that is considered a grave matter of international concern and for some valid reason cannot be left within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state that would have control over it under ordinary circumstances”. Crimes against humanity now are established as jus cogens norms and are implicitly recognized as such in the preamble of the Hague Convention, which served to codify the customary law of armed conflict. Unfortunately, despite several attempts for fixing liability to the individuals who have committed crime against humanity and subjecting them to trials like Nuremberg trials and Tokyo trials the legal framework for fixing liability to individuals guilty of the act of committing crime against humanity to this day remains obscure and vague and ad hoc mechanisms are used to settle such cases. In the face of recent developments in countries like Libya, Egypt, Iraq the lack of legal framework to deal with such matters has become a cause for international concern. The main thrust of this work is to study the existing legal framework for determination of individual’s accountability for the crime against humanity and to propose changes into the existing framework. Hypothesis There is insufficient legal framework for the control and regulation and for fixing liability on the individual for committing crime against humanity and the present mechanism works through international ad hoc tribunals internationalized or mixed tribunals, the International Criminal Court as well as national courts, military tribunals and ordinary courts which allows any state to try alleged perpetrators, even in the absence of any link between the accused and the state exercising jurisdiction which leads to miscarriage of justice on one hand and multiple trials on the same cause of action on the other hand. Research Questions 1. What is the genesis for global movement for accountability? 2. What are the shortcomings of the present legal framework for accountability of international crime? 3. What is the role of the International Law Enforcement Agencies to provide proper justice to the victims? 4. What are the shortcomings of the institutional mechanisms to prevent the growth and spread of the international crime? 5. What is the concept of global movement towards accountability and what is the scope of its growth? Methodology Having selected the above topic for this research, the work will perforce be based on theoretical doctrinal research. The methodology followed is traditional non-empirical research. Chapter Summary Chapter I: “ACCOUNTIBILITY OF INDIVIDUALS FOR CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY: THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK”. The jurisprudential rooting of the present research work is discussed under this chapter. This chapter also explains the concepts used in this research and international legal theories. Chapter-II: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE CONCERN FOR CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY AND FIXING OF ACCOUNTABILITY: This chapter discuss about the preliminary concepts of international crimes, such as aggression, genocide, war Crimes and crime against humanity and the historical evolution of crime against humanity, this is also an attempt to establish individual criminal liability for the crime against. Chapter-III: CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY BY INDIVIDUALS: PRE 1945 SPECTRUM: This chapter deals with the scenario of crime against humanity by individuals before 1945. Chapter-IV: CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY BY INDIVIDUALS: A POST 1945 SPECTRUM: This chapter describes the scenario of the framework of the trials of individuals for crime against humanity after World War II (1939-1945). Chapter V: “A ROADMAP OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES FOR DEALING WITH INDIVIDUALS ACCUSED OF CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY”. In this chapter the matter of discussion is about various international law enforcement agencies like International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice, Ad Hoc Tribunals and Hybrid Tribunals. Chapter-VI: “A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE INTERNATIONAL AND INDIAN LEGAL FRAMEWORK RELATING TO CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY BY INDIVIDUALS”. This chapter mainly deals with the Indian legal framework and also the various Indian incidents regarding the crime against humanity in comparison with international framework for accountability of individuals for crime against humanity. Chapter-VII: “A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL PRINCIPLES REGARDING LIABILITY OF INDIVIDUALS FOR CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY IN SELECTED NATIONAL JURISDICTIONS”. The subject matter of this chapter is about the various national laws to combat crime against humanity and the implementation of those laws by the nation states. Chapter-VIII: “INDIVIDUAL LEADER’S LIABLE FOR CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY: A COLLAGE”. In this chapter I have discussed about various specific instances of individual leader’s liability. It is a narrative chapter. Chapter IX: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUDING REMARKS: In conclusion it can be summed up that the hypothesis that legal framework for the control and regulation and for fixing liability on the individual for committing crime against humanity is insufficient, has been proved and in this regard certain suggestion has been put in the thesis.
Open Access
Capital Punishment in India
(University of North Bengal, 2020-09) Barot, Mehul P.; Lukka, Meet D.; Golani, Keyur V.
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Open Access
Crime and criminal behavior among the youth : A sociological study
(University of North Bengal, 2024) Singha, Bappi; Biswas, Saswati
The sociological approach gives a way to look at the issue of youth crime, which is distinctive from other disciplinary approaches. Considering its multidimensional character, explanations, and interpretations that have emerged from different disciplines, the present study delves further with the sociological lens and tries to interpret it accordingly. The changing ideas, values, and changes in the various formal and informal institutions have resulted in increasing crime rates worldwide. Unprecedented and unanticipated dimensions of criminality extend the extensive scope of research on youth crime and its behavioral aspects. Thus, the present study also signifies its behavioral aspect, which has a sociocultural base and deserves examination accordingly. Therefore, the definitional aspect of the phenomenon itself has emerged in several ways, and the parallel growth of the theoretical dimensions has paved the way for multifaced interpretation. Youth is a significant social category; their behavioral manifestations are based upon a distinct set of contextualizations that may not be similar to other social categories. It becomes more versatile when we are to examine their criminal behavior. However, the sociological analysis broadly examines youth crime from two aspects and all the major explanations can be categorized under it. First is the structural perspective, which emphasizes the larger social structure where youth crime occurs. It also raises the question about changes in the structure that result in crime and criminality. The other is the processual perspective, enquiring about how and why youth engage in different crimes and criminal behavior. The whole set of concerned theoretical traditions has developed accordingly. The emergence of ecological and sociological approaches has brought challenges to many conventional approaches that focus exclusively on biological and psychological factors. It was the primary turning point that directed the discourse towards social and sociological consideration. Gradually, the inception of structural explanation derived from the classical work of E.H Sutherland (1949), which attempts to illustrate the interrelation between crime and occupational framework, and the concepts of occupational crime, white collar crime, or corporate crime have evolved. It is based on a class approach to crime and criminality, reflecting the structural disposition through status and occupation. It has achieved more elaboration with the experiment of John Hagan (1988) in his work on structural criminology, which examines the existence of power in the phenomenon of crime and criminality. The control approach developed by Hirschi (1960) expresses concerns about the behavioral consequences of individuals influenced by power relationship ties with institutions. Moreover, several other experimentations developed by scholars like Brown (2018) and Muncie (2004) have opened multiple dimensions to look into the issue. However, the present study explores such orientation to understand the contextualization of youth crime and criminal behavior in Indian society. The diversity of the Indian social structure, which has multiple grounds for stratification, represents a complex existence in terms of caste, class, and gender, and the study has considered these to uncover the hidden reality. These provide specific grounds for social values, moralities, and rationalities that guide an individual's social life within the particular social structure. It results in distinct attitudes and behavioral patterns often confronting each other's interests, eventually extending and intensifying the scope of deviance, crime, and criminality. (e.g., riots, ethnic violence, etc.). The development of sociological tradition has brought the functional interpretation in examining such context, which may be understood by the work of Durkheim and Merton. Contemporarily, the conflict approach and Marxist tradition also became very significant, and the later development in modern theoretical tradition has led this into a more multidimensional character. Gradually, these classical approaches have been extended and replaced by several advancements in the field with newer approaches. The whole set of subcultural explanations developed by William F. Whyte's work Street Corner Society and Albert Cohen's work on Delinquent Boys added a distinct dimension to the issue of youth crime. Moreover, from the very interactionist perspective, the emergence of imitation, labeling, and control theories enriched the examination to another level. More specifically, the inclusion of feminist and postmodern approaches has enabled us to micro-analyze the phenomena that have become heavily significant in the present theoretical evolution dealing with the phenomena. Thus, based on the review of earlier works, the present study tries to locate the field within these theoretical rhizomes where the inclusion of multiple theories regarding both epistemology and methodology remains necessary. In categorizing the earlier works, the study finds that it majorly tries to analyze youth crime and criminal behavior as the individual outcome or the outcome of physical and social surroundings at a macro level. Such orientation overlooks many contexts that remain significant at the micro level and can heavily influence the reality that conditions youth crime. In hypothesizing and testifying the fact, the present study stresses analyzing the contextualization of power and the state's involvement in youth criminality. The outcome of such effort remains significant and helps theorize the nature and characteristics of youth criminality. In contemporary scenarios, many dimensions of youth crime are directly and indirectly influenced and conditioned by the state and its governance. The present study analyzes the role of the state in drug- related crimes, which prevail among youth in the study area. Youth's behavioral representation through illicit drug addiction and dealing provides the scope of governance and thus validates the involvement of the state in it. At the same time, the state also facilitates and sponsors many contexts that seduce youths into criminality. It results in producing the context of criminalization and deviance and criminals. The critical approach signifies the importance of class in its examination where the drug behavior, addiction, and relevant crime and criminality of youth are influenced. In such a way, we see a process of translating drugs into deviance and criminality that intensifies the political economy of the state. Thus, the state has two strands that promote youth criminality: state-facilitated and state-sponsored contexts of youth criminality. The present study has extended this framework to analyze the governmentality of the state through producing and reproducing the crime context to youth. In such circumstances, the examination of gender in youth criminality remains very crucial and necessary for the time. The study explores that the criminalization of genders in present times has become an unavoidable apparatus of the state's governance mechanism. Bringing more populations under the filtration of crime and criminality enables the inclusion of many people into control whose behavior remained liberated traditionally. Moreover, the categorization of crime and criminality materializes the masculinization and feminization of certain specific crimes that orients the contexts of youth crime socioculturally. The present study explores the contextualization of sex crime in young women's bodies, which has become normalized as well as institutionalized. It is found that the intimacy of state and patriarchy has created the ground of governing through criminality, especially through youth crime. Thus, the evolvement of 'gendered crime and criminality' and the 'criminalization of gender' takes place in contemporary times. However, the study has found a critical context in the conventional gender-based crime approach and also in the crime-based gender approach, where, in both cases, inequality persists in determining crime and criminal behavior. Moreover, it examines how the gender structure itself includes crime and criminality to establish and validate the unequal power relations in social stratification to regulate individuals. In such a context, inequality is not only executed with the male and female binary; moreover, the gender structure has also been reshaped and reformed in a way that all populations can be brought under its order. Thereby, the inclusion of LGBTQ+ (the rainbow community) people into the dominant gender structure has extended the field of power and politics and also contextualizes the scope of governing through crime and criminality (Simon 2007). In analyzing the pattern and context of cybercrime among youth, the study tries to dissect the sociocultural consideration of cyberspace. It explores the process through which such spaces have reproduced the social inequality that often conditions the context of crime and criminality. The rationalization of the cyber industry has resulted in producing the cyber surplus value where youths are being exploited. Being the prosumer, this eventually creates the ground of disappointment, frustration, anger, violence, and deviant behavior among youth. Moreover, the study explores the inmates' living conditions and the prison culture. It has examined the multifaced dimensions of prison living mates and also focuses on the understanding of victimization. After examining all issues, the present study may conclude that the analysis of youth crime, which traditionally finds youth as guilty in analyzing their criminality, is not the pertinent explanation. Instead, it is the social structure that has multiple sociocultural grounds for magnifying more and more youths in crime and criminality. The criminal behavior of youth is not innate; neither is it the result of learning circumstances through socialization as much as it claims in several theoretical approaches. Rather, it is more the outcome of sociocultural contexts that remain embedded into the social structure. Moreover, in present times, the intention of the state and operating governmentality through exercising youth crime as a means of controlling citizens has opened up another layer of youth oppression. Youth crime is a means of governance, and thus, it would not be wrong to state that doing youth crime in present times is more doing youth victimization. Therefore, it enables a fertile sociocultural context to produce and reproduce the passive citizen.
Open Access
Environmental Victimology in Indian Jurisprudence
(University of North Bengal, 2023-09) Singh, Gitu
In view of the varied kinds of emerging wrongs/crimes the legal injury suffered by an individual, community or non-human due to environmental crime is referred to as Environmental Victimology. This study aims to find out the development of environmental victimology in India, which means through this study the institutional response pertaining to protection of victims of environmental crime in India would be traced out. The present study is an attempt to find how has the Indian legislature and judiciary perceived a person or community who has suffered a legal injury due to environmental crime i.e. whether they are considered as victim as defined under sec. 2w(a) of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 or a victim under specific environmental legislations or a person whose fundamental right has been infringed thereby providing a remedy under the Indian Constitution. Finding the answer to the above questions raised would help in in determining the scope of environmental victimology in India.
Open Access
Roots, Nature and Extent of Gender Violence and Women Empowerment: Discourse and Reality in India
(University of North Bengal, 2023) Guha, Sumana
Violence against women is a deep-rooted phenomenon that can be traced back to the history of civilization. The restrictive socio-religious norms in India limit women’s choices and access to opportunities. Economic globalization has enhanced job opportunities for both men and women that has increased the number of women in the job market in India defying social norms. Nevertheless, violence against women has become an alarming concern in India. On one hand women’s increased access to job market appears as an indicator of enhancing their financial empowerment, freedom of movement etc. but violence against women, a sheer violation of human rights, undermines that empowerment. Hence, the co-existence of these positive and negative forces twined together create a very complex socio-economic environment in India. Emphasis is given to women’s empowerment because women are not just a subset of socially disadvantaged groups, but they are a crosscutting category that overlaps with all other disadvantaged groups. This paper worked with secondary (NBCR, NFHS) and primary data reveals that women empowerment and violence against women is highly positively correlated.