NCJ Number
179431
Editor(s)
Jack Kamerman
Date Published
1998
Length
214 pages
Annotation
This collection of 10 essays examines the issue of responsibility for one’s actions and, as a consequence, the issue of accountability as underpinnings for the operation of the criminal justice system.
Abstract
The volume examines the issue of responsibility from the perspectives of criminal justice professionals, sociologists, philosophers, and public administrators from four countries. The essays discuss the assumptions made by criminal justice institutions regarding offender responsibility, the views of offenders on the causes of their own actions and the consequences of offenders either accepting or denying responsibility. The essays also examine the social and psychological circumstances under which people in general accept or deny responsibility for what they do, thus providing the basis for understanding the process of social distance as a major precondition for people to commit atrocities without seeing themselves as responsible. The substantive vehicle for this analysis of accountability and responsibility was the relationship between criminal justice institutions and the offenders under institutional control. References, notes, appendixes, table, cases cited