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MAGNUS ULVÄNG & IAIN CAMERON

Essays on criminalisation & sanctions

During 2011–2013, Professor Magnus Ulväng and Professor Iain Cameron organized a series of seminars and two conferences at the Faculty of Law of Uppsala University, bringing together a number of distinguished researchers in criminal law. The themes were criminalization and sanctions. The two themes are linked: we are seeing a development in many countries towards expanded criminalization and stiffer penalties, despite the lack of empirical evidence that tougher sentences have any significant impact on crime. Amongst the different topics covered during the seminar series were the relationship between vengeance and the criminal law, the principle of ultima ratio, the development of criminalization in EU law, the evolution and justification of the system of Ordnungs widrigkeit and the role of moral theories in criminalization. This volume collects the essays which grew out of the papers presented during the seminar series.

Editors MAGNUS ULVÄNG & IAIN CAMERON

01 02 FnL1 AFNzM4k= EkZpcm1hIEpvaG4gUGVyc3NvbgRKb2hu 02 0040

ISBN 978-91-7678-871-4

Essays on criminalisation & sanctions

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ESSAYS ON CRIMINALISATION & SANCTIONS EDITORS MAGNUS ULVÄNG & IAIN CAMERON

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Preface

The present book grew out of the seminar series on sanctions organized by the editors during 2010â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2013. The seminar series also involved two conferences, the first in honour of Hans G. Nilsson, on him being appointed honorary doctor at the Faculty of Law of Uppsala University in 2011, the second on sanctions and criminalization in 2012. Selected papers submitted during these two conferences have been included in the present volume. In addition to the authors in this volume, we would like to thank all the participants in these conferences and the seminar series, in particular Nils Jareborg. The Emil Heijnes Foundation generously provided the necessary publication funding. Lastly, we should say that the authors submitted their chapters at different times during the late spring of 2012. In general, they have tried to state the law and practice as it is on 31 January 2012. In a number of cases they have been able to take account of subsequent changes. Magnus UlvĂ¤ng and Iain Cameron

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contents

Contents

Preface

Vengeance revisited Heike Jung

Criminalization and the ultima ratio principle Nils Jareborg

Towards a Modest Legal Moralism R A Duff

Criminalisation, Wrongs and Reasons A.P. Simester & Andreas von Hirsch

The treatment of mere regulatory offences in German penal law – historical development, today’s concept and general criticism Marco Mansdörfer

Principles of Criminalization – What is “Criminal” in Criminal Law? 109 Petter Asp

Paternalistic Interventions Through the Law on Violations Nina Peršak

Four Functions of Mens Rea 143 Winnie Chan & A.P. Simester

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contents

Some reflections on the development of an EU criminal policy, on Directives in criminal law and sanctions contained therein 163 Hans G. Nilsson

10 The European Union and Harmonization of the Criminal Law Enforcement of Union Policies: in Search of a Criminal Law Policy? 185 John A.E. Vervaele List of Contributors

227

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vengeance revisited

1 Vengeance revisited heike jung*

Introduction

Apparently, I am bad at forecasts. When I was asked, in the beginning of the nineties, to give my opinion on the development of the criminal law in the 21st century,1 I criticized, on the one hand, the all too frequent use of criminal law. On the other hand, I predicted that the over-all punitive level was going to decrease. This was also the direction of the policy proposals of a committee which I was a member of at the time. We came forward with the anti-cyclical plea to radically reduce the length of prison sentences2. The term “anti-cyclical” already hints at the change of the criminal policy climate which had taken place in the meantime. Only a few years later, I had to revoke my forecast in my gloomy yet rebellious pamphlet “Wider die neue Straflust!”.3 Today, “punitiveness” seems to govern not only the criminal policy practice, but also the academic discourse.4

* The text is based upon a paper which I presented at the Uppsala Law Faculty in April 2010. It has been revised for the publication. A slightly different German version „Von der Rache zur Strafe und zurück?” has been published in: Kühl/Seher (eds.), Rom, Recht, Religion. Symposion für Udo Ebert zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2011, p. 383–399. 1 Jung, New Perspectives or More of the Same? Criminal Law and Criminal Science in the 21st Century, Keio Law Review 19 (1993), p. 41. 2 Jung/Müller-Dietz (eds.), Langer Freiheitsentzug – wie lange noch?, Forum Verlag Godesberg, Bonn 1994. 3 Jung, Wider die neue „Straflust“ !, Goldtammer’s Archiv (GA) 2006, p. 724. 4 Cf. e. g. Beiheft no. 8 (2004) of the Kriminologische Journal consecrated in toto to „Punitivität“ and Salas, La volonté de punir. Essai sur le populisme pénal, Hachette Littératures, Paris 2005.

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heike jung

Do these proliferating punitive demands signify the return of vengeance? The contemporary German debate about the aims of punishment rather circumvents the term vengeance. It follows the traditional beaten track oscillating between retribution and different modes of prevention with compensation and reparation adding some new tunes to the familiar melody.5 In a way, the discourse about punishment tends to be a closedshop, with rare interdisciplinary transgressions. Of course there are exceptions to the rule: Trechsel’s straight-forward proposal of a “substitute for vengeance”-theory6 and Neumann’s reference to vengeance in his rehearsal of the contemporary debate on “Institution, Zweck und Funktion staatlicher Strafe”7 show that the term “vengeance” is no total stranger to the German debate. Yet, the Anglo-American theory of punishment is much more outspoken and has for a long time reinstated vengeance in its role as a morally acceptable or at least debatable back-drop for the justification of a sanction. There are several reasons for the return of vengeance in the present-day penal discourse. It may be too easy to blame it on post-modernity, a familiar alibi for all sorts of currents which tend to undermine the concept of rationality. It makes more sense to look into the question whether this is a consequence of the renaissance of the victim. When we unfold this hypothesis we discover the return of emotions in criminal policy.8 In addition to that, due to migration and globalisation, we are confronted with the phenomenon of blood feud which we used to attribute to far away backward societies. It is a characteristic of the debate that we all seem to have a clear notion of what vengeance is about. We associate uncontrolled and uncontrollable blood-shed with it, a relic dating back to the early days of humanity. We believe in having domesticated vengeance over the centuries and in having constantly refined and humanised our criminal justice system. At this stage, we have to ask ourselves whether we do not operate with a precon-

Seelmann, Strafzwecke und Wiedergutmachung, Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik 1981, p. 44. Trechsel, Die Entwicklung der Mittel und Methoden des Strafrechts, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Strafrecht 90 (1974), p. 271, 279. Neumann, Institution, Zweck und Funktion staatlicher Strafe, in: Festschrift für Jakobs, Heymanns, Köln et al. 2007, p. 435. E.g. Karstedt/Loader/Strang (eds.), Emotions, Crime and Justice, Hart, Oxford/Portland 2011.

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vengeance revisited

ceived notion of vengeance. It could be of help to test this notion against the consolidated body of ethnological research. I have just outlined an agenda which I cannot cope with in such a paper. Yet, I do feel the urge to at least give some hints for future research. This urge has a biographical explanation: My essay “Was ist Strafe?”9 was meant to fill a lacuna which I left in my study on “Sanktionensysteme und Menschenrechte”,10 i.e. the qualification of “sanction”. But I neglected the issue of “vengeance” in that essay, and the present article is intended to remedy this.

About Durkheim’s theory of punishment

More extensive studies on the relationship between vengeance and punishment are rare. We take it for granted that vengeance has been the archetype of a reaction against wrong-doing which we have luckily overcome. The “modern” punishment stands for progress in civilisation. It does not lead far if we consult criminal lawyers only. They seem to cherish their traditional “aims of punishment”-discourse and operate within that closed system. We need to take a look at this system from the outside. Durkheim will provide us with the looking glass. In his famous doctoral thesis about “The division of labour” of 1893 he has – somewhat unexpectedly in view of the title – come forward with a comprehensive theory of punishment and its development. The core piece of his theory of punishment is the “conscience collective” or “commune” which needs to be stabilised by punishment. Durkheim relates this to the era of “solidarité mécanique” which will, according to him, due to the on-going differentiation of the division of labour be followed by the era of the “solidarité organique”. This era will be ruled by the model of compensation, i.e. we move from repression to restitution (“si le droit répressif perd du terrain, le droit restitutif, qui n’existait pas du tout à l’origine, ne fait que s’accroître.”).11 Of course, the era of the “solidarité mécanique” is already an advanced stage of civilisation. Therefore, his approach to vengeance is of greater interest in our context than his forecast on compensation’s march to victory (which in actual fact, did not take place). According to Durkheim, punish9 10 11

Jung, Was ist Strafe?, Nomos, Baden-Baden 2002. Jung, Sanktionensysteme und Menschenrechte, Haupt, Bern 1992. Durkheim, De la division du travail social, 7th ed., Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2007, p. 182.

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ment and vengeance differ inasmuch as only punishment is applied with purpose. However, Durkheim refrains from drawing a clear line. Rather he operates with a gliding scale. He describes punishment as a “réaction passionnelle”. The degree of passion shows how civilised the particular society is (“Ce caractère est d’autant plus apparent que les sociétés sont moins cultivées”).12 In his model, punishment figures as the general term, though he notes a change in character: “Mais aujourd’hui, dit-on, la peine a changé de nature; ce n’est plus pour se venger que la société chatie, c’est pour se défendre. La douleur qu’elle inflige n’est plus entre ses mains qu’un instrument méthodique de protection.” At the same time Durkheim makes a point in stating: “… c’est une erreur de croire que la vengeance ne soit qu’une inutile cruauté.”13 Rather we may only have been unaware of the purpose that was attached to it: “Il est bien possible qu’en elle-même elle consiste dans une réaction mécanique et sans but, dans un mouvement passionnel et inintelligent, dans un besoin irraisonné de détruire; mais, en fait, ce qu’elle tend à détruire était une menace pour nous. Elle constitue donc en réalité un véritable acte de défense, quoique instincitf et irréfléchi.”14 Vengeance is just in lack of a system. Punishment, on the other hand, has partly remained “une œuvre de la vengeance”: “On dit que nous ne faisons pas souffrir le coupable pour le faire souffrir; il n’est pas moins vrai que nous trouvons juste qu’il souffre.”15 Durkheim does not even try to disentangle punishment and vengeance completely though he is propagating a line of progress ranging from vengeance to punishment and then, in last instance, to restitution, thus implicitly advocating a process of constant reduction of violence. Apparently, from a sociological point of view, the borderline between punishment and vengeance seems to be somewhat blurry when it comes to the content of the reaction. The French criminologist Robert even goes a step further. Relying on anthropological knowledge he rejects Durkheim’s contention that vengeance was something erratic. He rather considers vengeance and punishment as “deux formes de juridicité également réglées”.16 Apparently, the institutions involved make the difference.

12 13 14 15 16

Durkheim (note 11), p. 52. Durkheim (note 11), p. 54. Durkheim (note 11), p. 54. Durkheim (note 11), p. 55. Robert, La vengeance, l’État et la peine, Canadian Journal of Law and Society/Revue canadienne droit et société 11 (1996), p. 235, 244. Neumann’s observations (note 7, p. 440)

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MAGNUS ULVÄNG & IAIN CAMERON

Essays on criminalisation & sanctions

Editors MAGNUS ULVÄNG & IAIN CAMERON

01 02 FnL1 AFNzM4k= EkZpcm1hIEpvaG4gUGVyc3NvbgRKb2hu 02 0040

ISBN 978-91-7678-871-4

Essays on criminalisation & sanctions

Essays_ulväng.omslag_hela.3.UtanEds.indd 1

5/21/14 10:08 AM