In May 2015, in an effort to foster peace in the restive Papua and West Papua Provinces, Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo granted clemency to five political prisoners, releasing them from sentences ranging from 20 years to life. The president also stated that there would be ‘a follow-up granting clemency or amnesty to other [political prisoners] in other regions’ (Jakarta Post, 10 May 2015). However, with up to 50 political prisoners still incarcerated in prisons around Indonesia (mostly Papuan and Moluccan separatists), Jokowi’s selective release policy faces several legal and political obstacles. This article outlines the various options open to Jokowi in facilitating future political prisoner releases (including amnesty, clemency, remissions and conditional release), the advantages and disadvantages of each, before suggesting an acceptable way forward for all parties.

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Legal dilemmas in releasing indonesia's political prisoners

This article discusses unique considerations for a culturally sensitive emotionally focused therapy (EFT) for African American couples. EFT is an empirically supported treatment that significantly ...

Emotionally Focused Therapy: A Culturally Sensitive Approach for African American Heterosexual Couples

IntroductionRestorative justice is a recent concept. Its exact characteristic is still evolving, even in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where the theory is borne over the past three decades (Doolin, 2007; Hill, 2008; Mousourakis, 2004; Roach, 2000; Schmid, 2003). The theory has started to take a global shape (Archibald & Llewellyn, 2006; Hudson, 2007), with the United Nations' attempt to adopt restorative standards as part of international human rights law (Braithwaite, 2002; United Nations, 2000; United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, 2006). Yet the concept of restoration is rooted in many religions and indigenous cultures (Katz & Bonham, 2006; Sarre, 1999).As opposed to traditional/retributive justice, restorative justice assumes that crime relates to private relations between people. It is not a public matter. Thus the state remains aside while victims and offenders resolving their disputes. It follows that victims or their smaller community, particularly families, reserve the final say in determining the offender's fate on a case-by-case basis. If victims give up their right to prosecute, the perpetrators would ideally evade penalty. A whole process takes place in lieu of classical penalty, however. The purpose is to hold offenders accountable for the harm done, rehabilitate and reintegrate, or restore, them into the community (Consedine, 1999).Restorative justice tends to be flexible. Its processes take various forms depending on the gravity of the crime, damage caused, personal and social status of the offender, his or her sex, age, family, education and victim's position. Such forms include, inter alia, compensation, conciliation and pardon. To these ends, the offender could be fined, asked to provide an apology and express regret, placed under probation or required to provide services to the victim or to the community. Restorative justice is viewed, theoretically and in practice, as one model in comparative criminal justice systems (Meier, 1998). It is not the alternative. Other models include 'retributive', 'deterrent' and 'rehabilitative' (Knox, 2001). Hence, restorative justice can work for certain crimes, not all in relation to all offences; for some victimizers or victims, not all persons; and in given communities, not everywhere.This paper explores the extent to which certain approaches embedded in Islamic jurisprudence, fikh, relating to criminal law are similar to contemporary restorative justice practices. The paper relies on the understanding the concept of restorative justice, of restorative practices in a number of countries, mainly in the United States, Canada, Australia and England. It considers existing international standards as developed by the United Nations over the past few years. As to Islamic law, the paper relies on classical jurisprudence in order to assess whether a restorative theory has been known in the early centuries of Islamic legal scholarship. It does not depend on restorative-like practices in Islamic states at the present time (Rahami, 2007); because criminal law applicable in most of these countries is either Western-imported law or tribal law that does not necessarily relate to Islam.Besides this introduction and the conclusion, the paper is divided into two parts. The first addresses the major, or macro, rules embedded in Islamic jurisprudence that might be considered as restorative practices: compensation, conciliation and pardon. The following part highlights a number of detailed, or micro, measures that had been set out by Muslim scholars that can be placed within the scope of restorative proper in one way or another. The conclusion would clarify where restorative justice theory stands within the Islamic penal law and assess the extent to which Islamic law differs or resembles modern restorative justice trends of various systems worldwide.Macro Restorative Justice Techniques: The Victim's OptionsAccording to Islamic jurisprudence, victims can restore their rights by a variety of ways. …

https://www.sascv.org/ijcjs/pdfs/mutazaicjs2012istissue.pdf

Restorative Justice in the Islamic Penal Law: A Contribution to the Global System

On January 8, 2019, shortly after his inauguration, California's Governor Gavin Newsom announced a proposal to provide health coverage to undocumented immigrants up to age 26. That same day, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a $100 million plan to cover 600,000 uninsured New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status. These proposals from public officials on opposite sides of the continent stood in stark contrast to the Trump Administration's demand for a wall at the southern border, and its proposed public charge regulations that are expected to lead millions of lawfully present immigrants and their families to forego health insurance.

The Plenary Power Meets the Police Power: Federalism at the Intersection of Health & Immigration.

The Palestinian Authority is under obligation to observe international human rights standards relating to children in conflict with the law. However, the authority has done little to improve the juvenile justice system. Children are treated in accordance with rules that have been drafted to suit past generations. The system lacks resources, trained police, prosecutors, judges, and probation officers. Yet the environment to reform the system is enabling. There are foundations to set up modern alternatives to imprisonment, including community service, alternative families, and restorative justice. The main problem in Palestine is not the law, though important, but rather the allocation of resources and adoption of reform policies. Nothing in the law precludes the Ministry of Social Affairs opening new juvenile rehabilitation centres or to give more powers to probation officers. Nothing prevents the High Judicial Council setting up a specialised juvenile judiciary. The Attorney General can establish juvenile prosecution. The police could open specialised juvenile unites. Civil society organisations are able to provide legal aid and conduct training courses on restorative justice and on socio-psychological issues. Most reform steps can be taken on a functional basis through executive instructions from relevant official bodies. Language: en

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Juvenile Justice System in Palestine: Current Situation and Reform Prospects

This Article considers the question of whether “restorative justice” theory supports the offering of conditional amnesty, as exemplified in South Africa under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Among the reasons why restorative justice fails as a satisfactory justification for amnesty when offered by a state are that it embodies a private concept of reparation and healing that cannot effectively be administered by the state; that it seeks primarily to promote healing by meeting the needs of individual victims, while amnesty often cannot meet these needs; and that the rights and needs of others in the community who were not directly affected by the criminal act are overlooked. This Article suggests a modified version of restorative justice which takes into account the private needs of individual victims and their families while also offering the public forgiveness desired by certain communities in post-conflict zones.

Private Crimes and Public Forgiveness: Towards a Refined Restorative Justice Amnesty Regime

Irrational fear of people of color has shaped the American criminal justice system since the nation’s colonial beginnings. But while scholars have examined the impacts of racial bias on official institutional actors – police, prosecutors, judges, and juries – comparatively little has been written about civilian abuse of law enforcement to weaponize their own racial fears. This Article presents the first comprehensive discussion of civilian manipulation of the criminal justice system to enforce racial bias and the state’s acquiescence to this bias-motivated abuse.

The Article proceeds in five parts. First, it traces the legacy of racial fear from slavery and Jim Crow to mass incarceration and current corrosive biases against people of color who step out of their “iconic ghettos” into “white spaces.” Second, it explores the role of implicit bias in perpetuating racial fear and the limits of bias retraining programs. Third, it examines the abuse of emergency response systems by the racially fearful, including the motivations for and tragic consequences of calling 911 for “living while black.” Fourth, the Article confronts the “weapon” in this scenario: the armed police officer. It examines the near-absolute immunity for officer violence against people of color, as well as the growing immunity for civilian vigilantes in so-called “stand your ground jurisdictions,” both of which encourage preventable violent confrontations initiated by civilian racial fear.

Fifth, the Article surveys existing legislative schemes to reduce 911 abuse and presents an innovative model statute that balances the need for access to emergency response systems with a desire to deter racially-biased behavior. Borrowing from recent legislative efforts to reduce frivolous lawsuits aimed at chilling free speech and silencing public critics, the model statute attempts to deter and punish clearly frivolous abuses while neither chilling participation from innocent civilians nor demanding civilian expertise of suspicious criminal activity. In doing so, the Article encourages both less police responsiveness to non-emergency calls and more aggressive enforcement against invitations to criminalize on the basis of race.

Weaponized Racial Fear

This Article explores the weakened foundations of plenary power as a coherent doctrine in immigration, and asserts that a continued if limited role for the doctrine exists in the national security context. With reference to recent litigation over the Trump travel bans, the Article calls for a two-tiered level of review of challenged immigration action: 1) a searching evidentiary inquiry regarding the central motivation behind the action, and 2) a more deferential inquiry into the action's constitutionality when the action was driven primarily by national security interests.

The Unreviewable Executive? National Security and the Limits of Plenary Power

In the forty years since Washington v. Davis, courts have struggled to articulate with any consistency an evidentiary standard for determining the existence of impermissible discriminatory motive. Though not required to do so, courts have often avoided considering any evidence of animus not contained within the official legislative or administrative record out of skepticism for the probative value of such “unofficial” statements. Lacking a coherent approach, courts have split on whether and to what extent statements made in the course of an election campaign should factor into discriminatory intent analysis. The 2016 presidential campaign has forced courts to squarely address this issue, as litigants challenging President Trump’s executive orders on immigration dredge up a trove of discriminatory and inflammatory statements made by candidate Trump. 

Curiously, the wealth of legal scholarship examining the contours of discriminatory intent analysis have largely ignored the relevance and propriety of campaign rhetoric as a permissible form of evidence in the analysis. This Article fills that gap. It proceeds by examining the five primary arguments against considering campaign statements as evidence of subjective animus, and illustrating why none of these arguments justify such a bright-line evidentiary bar. In short, traditional claims that campaign statements are of limited probative value address their evidentiary weight rather than their admissibility and fail to account for a court’s ability to discount the evidence as necessary. By adopting a more fact-specific, objective, and flexible approach to campaign statements, courts not only will more faithfully adhere to the spirit of Davis and its progeny, but will also be equipped to address the atypical case of a politician who speaks his discriminatory mind and then acts on it.

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Shawn Fields

Papers

Private Crimes and Public Forgiveness: Towards a Refined Restorative Justice Amnesty Regime

Weaponized Racial Fear

The Unreviewable Executive? National Security and the Limits of Plenary Power

Private Crimes and Public Forgiveness: Towards a Refined Restorative Justice Amnesty Regime

Is it Bad Law to Believe a Politician? Campaign Speech and Discriminatory Intent