NCJ Number
181154
Date Published
1998
Length
216 pages
Annotation
In recent years, the three most violent low-intensity conflicts in western Europe have been in Northern Ireland, Italy, and the Spanish Basque Country; this book examines how each jurisdiction has dealt with the problems presented by politically motivated violent offenders and how the penal system has been used to reduce the level of conflict.
Abstract
The first chapter provides an overview of the concept of the politically motivated violent offender (PMVO). It concludes that it is both possible and defensible to differentiate political from personal motivation in crime and thus in prisoners and that differences do exist between ordinary nonpolitical criminals and politically motivated offenders, including PMVOs. The second chapter examines the problems and differences that politically motivated criminals pose for penal systems that are primarily designed for the punishment of "normal" or common criminals, the latter being people who commit crimes for personal rather than political reasons. The third chapter provides an analysis of the political conflict in Northern Ireland from 1969 through 1997, with attention to how penal policy has been influenced by the political conflict. The fourth chapter focuses on ideologically motivated political violence in Italy between 1969 and 1997. The violence was perpetrated by groups representing the far-right and the far-left between 1969 and 1989. Although the level of violence in Italy was generally lower than that in Northern Ireland or in the Spanish Basque Country, it was still of importance, since Italian terrorism was directly aimed at the destruction of the post-war democracy that had developed in Italy. The fifth chapter focuses on the violence stemming from the Basque nationalist movement between 1969 and 1997. The concluding chapter discusses the role of penal policy in the reduction of political violence. In considering the roles that penal policy has played in the three case-study conflicts, the chapter focuses on deterrence, punishment and retribution, surveillance, and incapacitation; conversion that views prison policy as part of a counter-insurgency strategy; and peace-building and negotiation that can be linked into a conflict-resolution approach to penal policy. The final chapter first examines the role that each of these penal policies has played in the state's response to political violence in the three case studies and elsewhere in the world. Then the role of penal policy in reducing political violence is discussed in wider terms. Chapter notes, a 175-item bibliography, and a subject index