International Criminological Association
The International Criminalist Association (IKV) was an organization that existed from 1889 to 1933 and focused on questions of criminal policy and criminal law reform. Its members were predominantly - but by no means exclusively - lawyers. It was founded in Vienna in 1888/89 by Professors Adolphe Prins ( Brussels ), Franz von Liszt ( Halle ) and Gerardus Antonius van Hamel ( Amsterdam ) and was also known as the International Union of Penal Law or Union Internationale de Droit Pénal (IUPL / UIDP) known. After the transnational character of the IKV had suffered under the First World War, the English and French-speaking successor organizations (International Association of Penal Law, or Association Internationale de Droit Pénal; IAPL / AIDP) were founded in Paris on March 14, 1924 .
Program
The focus of the program, which was based on the conviction that the subject of crime and punishment in science and legislation should be viewed as much from a sociological as from a legal point of view, was the reform of the penal system and the penal system , in particular the fight against those as perishable respected short term imprisonment. As a substitute for the short term of imprisonment , a labor sentence without incarceration - today one would speak of community service - provided. The IKV also campaigned for the introduction of conditional convictions (= suspended sentence on probation ).
In the 19th century, the IKV formulated the following central concerns:
- Using other means than just punishment to combat crimes,
- Use of sociological and anthropological research,
- Differentiation between casual and habitual criminals (as well as rendering the latter harmless if they are incorrigible),
- Elimination of the separation of the prison system from the criminal justice system,
- Improving prisons ,
- Replacement of short-term imprisonment,
- Assessment of the length of the sentence in the case of long-term imprisonment also based on the results of the execution of sentences.
The first congresses of the IKV, each of which had been prepared through expert opinions and reports, were held in Brussels (1889), Bern (1890), Kristiania (1891) and Paris (1893). The association, which also published both a French and a German yearbook, had at the time of the Paris Congress over 600 members from almost every country in Europe, from North and South America, Egypt and Japan.
From 1889 to 1914 the IKV fought hard to achieve its reform goals. The First World War shook transnational cohesion. The German national group of the IKV continued to work for the reform of the German criminal law, but then failed due to the rise of National Socialism. The end of the IKV is sometimes dated to 1932 (the year of the last congress of the German section) and sometimes to 1937 (formal dissolution).
The assessments of the role of the IKV are divided. While some (e.g. Hans-Heinrich Jescheck ) see the IKV as a forerunner of criminal policy liberalization in the late 20th century, others (e.g. Leon Radzinowicz) emphasize the direct and indirect lines of connection between the IKV and the authoritarian Leading criminal justice and suppression systems of the early 20th century (Fascist Italy, Third Reich, Stalinism).
literature
- Elisabeth Bellmann: The International Criminological Association. (1889–1933) (= legal history series. 116). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1994, ISBN 3-631-46539-4 (also: Kiel, Universität, Dissertation, 1993).
- Hans-Heinrich Jescheck : The influence of the IKV and the AIDP on the international development of modern criminal policy. In: Journal for the entire field of criminal law . Vol. 92, No. 4, 1980, pp. 997-1020, doi : 10.1515 / zstw.1980.92.4.995 .
- Sylvia Kesper-Biermann: Scientific exchange of ideas and "criminal policy propaganda". The International Criminological Association (1889–1937) and the penal system. In: Désirée Schauz, Sabine Freitag (Ed.): Criminals in the sights of the experts. Criminal policy between science and practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries (= science, politics and society. 2). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-515-09055-1 , pp. 79-97.
- Leon Radzinowicz : The Roots of the International Association of Criminal Law and their Significance. A Tribute and a Re-assessment on the Centenary of the IKV (= Criminological Research Reports from the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. 45). Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg (Breisgau) 1991, ISBN 3-922498-50-7 .
- Richard Vogler: A World View of Criminal Justice. Ashgate, Aldershot et al. 2005, ISBN 0-7546-2467-6 .