Legal Theory Blog: Kashefi on Kropotkin on Criminal Law

Sirus Kashefi (Osgoode Hall Law School - York University) has posted Kropotkin?s Anarchist Ideas About Criminal Law: Between Sensualism and Scientism on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Even its appearance may show opposite, this paper neither prove nor disapprove Kropotkin?s ideas about criminal law, which are balanced between feelings (journalism), and reason or observation (science). However, despite all its criticisms, this paper cannot deny Kropotkin?s humanistic outlook based on feelings, holistic analysis, personal experience, and virulent criticisms of law and punishment. Hence, it tries to give a critical insight into Kropotkinian ideas and experience that are, if not pejorative, unknown or neglected among the criminologists and criminal lawyers, whose criticisms traditionally come from professionalism and opportunism which go hand in hand with their conservative nature justifying the established order imposed upon the individual through penal institutions (i.e. police, prosecutor, judge, and prison) and ideological institutions (school, college, university, church, radio, TV, the Internet, etc.). Moreover, Kropotkin?s reputation as an anarchist, which is always and fictively regarded as terrorist or anti-order, has created a dark image of a man with a great heart and a critical mind. As a matter of fact, his ideas still remain undiscovered in the faculty of law that has coldly closed its eyes to the fate of our friends, brothers, sisters, and children whose misery is responded by punishment (especially prison) against which Kropotkin has ethically and scientifically warned us. Can the existence of over 9,000,000 prisoners and the unknown amount of so-called criminals living in terrible conditions, in which they are treated worse than wild animals in zoo, lead us to think of Kropotkin?s writings about criminal law? Do his ideas still remain alive, burning, and relevant? Up to the readers to answer these questions after reading this paper.

Source: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2011/06/kashefi-on-kropotkin-on-criminal-law.html

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