Criminal Justice and Genocide: Home
Criminal justice is a generic term that refers to the laws, procedures, institutions, and policies at play before, during, and after the commission of a crime. As a modern concept, criminal justice expresses two central ideas. The first is that criminals and victims of crime have certain rights, while the second is that criminal conduct should be prosecuted and punished by the state following set laws (LII, 2020).
Articles
- The 8 Stages of GenocidePrevention of genocide requires a structural understanding of the genocidal process. Genocide has eight stages or operational processes. The first stages precede later stages, but continue to operate throughout the genocidal process. Each stage reinforces the others. A strategy to prevent genocide should attack each stage, each process. The eight stages of genocide are classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial.
- Dangerous Speech and Dangerous Ideology: An Integrated Model for Monitoring and PreventionThis paper draws together the authors’ independent past work on dangerous speech and the ideological dynamics of mass atrocities by offering a new integrated model to help identify the sorts of speech and ideology that raise the risk of atrocities and genocides
- Vile Crime or Inalienable Right: Defining Incitement to GenocidePolitical leaders in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and other pre-genocidal societies prepared civilian populations to condone genocide, by using certain techniques to make mass killing seem first acceptable, and then necessary. This article describes those techniques, and includes them in a new six-prong model for incitement to genocide.
- Working with the remains in Cambodia, Skeletal analysis and human rights after atrocityThis essay will discuss the research being conducted on Khmer Rouge-era human skeletal remains in Cambodia, and the implications of this work. This exceptional undertaking was the first complete scientific analysis of human remains from a Cambodian mass gravesite.
- Patterns of Mortuary Practice Associated with GenocideThe article presents a study which investigates the association of patterns of conflict-related mortuary practice with the agent of burial which may be identified in the archaeological record. During the investigation, the researchers examine the treatment of the dead resulting from the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995 and the Anfal campaign targeting Kurdish civilians in Iraq in 1987.
- Forensic Legacy of the Khmer Rouge: The Cambodian GenocideThis paper outlines the few forensic investigations which have been undertaken on the remains of the deceased from this period in Cambodia's history. The current status of the legal proceedings and the current death investigation system in Cambodia are also presented. There is a wealth of objective forensic information that can be gathered from analyzing the remains that have been disturbed and placed in monuments (stupas), and also in the undisturbed graves across the country.
Books & eBooks
Centuries of Genocide by The fourth edition of Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts addresses examples of genocides perpetrated in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.
Investigating Srebrenica by Call Number: DR 1313.32 S68 I68 2014Publication Date: 2014In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN "safe area" since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories.
The Stone Fields by Call Number: DR 1313.7 A85 B75 2005Publication Date: 2005When she was twenty-three years old, Courtney Angela Brkic joined a UN-contracted forensic team in eastern Bosnia. Unlike many aid workers, Brkic was drawn there by her family history, and although fluent in the language, she was advised to avoid letting local workers discover her ethnicity. Her passionate narrative of establishing a morgue in a small town and excavating graves at Srebenica is braided with her family's remarkable history in what was once Yugoslavia.
War Crimes, Genocide, and the Law: a Guide to the Issues by War Crimes, Genocide, and the Law: A Guide to the Issues examines the types of war crimes and the motivations behind them, as well as the laws that seek to control and abolish these heinous acts. Within the handbook, centuries of war crimes and genocides are analyzed and catalogued.
Dissertations
- Proving Genocide: The Role of Forensic Anthropology in Developing Evidence to Convict Those Responsible for GenocideOne key player in genocide investigations has been the forensic anthropologist. The role of the forensic anthropologist in excavating mass graves, and analyzing the skeletal remains of the victims has been pivotal to successful prosecution of the guilty.
Web Resources and Sites
- Criminal Justice Approaches for Preventing Mass AtrocitiesThe “Lessons in Leadership: Criminal Justice Approaches for Preventing Mass Atrocities” course and the Guide to Criminal Justice and Preventing Mass Atrocities offer guidance and instruction to enhance the knowledge, skills, and abilities of criminal justice professionals globally to act locally to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.
- Holocaust and Human BehaviorExplore the digital version of our core resource on the Holocaust. Find classroom-ready readings, primary sources, and short documentary films that support a study of the Holocaust through the lens of human behavior.
Films
