Isabel Schoultz

State Crime in the Street-Level Bureaucracy: Towards an Understanding of Crimes of the Welfare State

On the basis of two points of departure: (1) no state has clean hands and (2) the types of crime a state commits vary with state formations, this article explores cases where the Swedish state and its agencies have been held responsible for some form of wrongdoing. Drawing on a total of 8,561 judgments issued against the state by agencies of control (the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Chancellor of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights), the study finds that most cases of substantive and procedural crime committed by the state are related to the street-level bureaucracy, where state officials working in public sector agencies interact with citizens in the course of their everyday employment. Further, the study finds that most of the judgments revolve around issues of particular accountability relating to the individual interests of the complainants and that only a relatively small portion involve complaints against the state in relation to general policies or general conduct. One overall conclusion is that the crimes committed by the Swedish welfare state involve acts of negligence rather than purposeful acts of repression, and that the offences primarily involve procedural rather than substantive wrongs. The results are interpreted as a function of both how state bureaucracy works and of the limited ability of the existing control mechanisms.

Legal Aid in Sweden

Sweden has a combination of public and private protection of legal expenses in civil cases. The public legal aid scheme is subsidiary to the legal expense insurance, which means anyone who had a legal expense insurance covering the current affair would not receive legal aid. The chapter aims at reviewing the current legal aid in the country with emphasis on the public legal aid scheme and the legal expense insurance. The text also includes discussions on the function of the legal aid scheme in relation to the welfare state and from an access to justice perspective, pointing out strengths and weaknesses of the legal aid policies and practices.

La giustizia penale internazionale: un deterrente per i crimini di Stato?: 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.

La giustizia penale internazionale: un deterrente per i crimini di Stato?

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.

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.