Below is the unedited, uncorrected final draft of a target article that has been accepted for publication. Czech Yearbook of Public & Private Law, Praha, 2012, Vol. 3, pp.157-171 "SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS" IN THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER AND THEIR ROLE FOR THE UNITED NATIONS CRIMINAL JUSTICE STUDIES Sławomir Redo
Abstract: Through the results of various empirical findings, this criminological essay aims to prove how important it is to look at the role of the United Nations Charter for criminal justice education to prevent violent conflicts. In the interest of strengthening peace and security in the world the essay promotes the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies. Key words: attachment, conflict, crime prevention, education, justice, peace, rule of law, security, United Nations Charter, war.
For Miroslav, Pavel and Zdenĕk – my younger and older Czech friends 1. Introduction The Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations declares: “We the Peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”…, and “to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.”1 Virginia Gildersleeve, a US professor of literature and the most retiring member of the US delegation at the San Francisco Conference that drafted the UN Charter, felt that its Originally written by Jan Smuts, the South African veteran Field Marshal as: "The High Contracting Parties, determined to prevent a recurrence of the fratricidal strife which twice in our generation has brought untold sorrow and loss upon mankind. . ." which would have been similar to the opening lines of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The text was criticized by the US delegate as “clumsy”, “lacking any soul” and “a literary and “intellectual abortion” (Schlesinger, S.E. , Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations: A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World, Westview, Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA, 2004, p. 236). Regarding the letter and spirit of the United Nations language and the difficulties in its intercultural comprehension, see: S. Redo, Blue Criminology. The Power of United Nations Ideas to Counter Crime Globally. A Monographic Study, The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations, Helsinki, 2012, pp. 44 & 209-211. 1
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Preamble should be short, moving and beautiful. She believed that its text should be “something simple that every school child in the world could commit to memory and that could hang, framed, in every cottage on the globe.”2 The drafting Committee concurred and emphasized that the Preamble “should have the harmony in ideas, the tone in words, and the light, which can awaken the imagination of men to the points at issue, kindle their feelings, and move them.”3 Consequently, such text was adopted, as quoted above, whereby its seven first words were patterned after the opening of the US Constitution.4 In all fairness, save her dedicated involvement and the two incidental interventions by other U.S. delegation members, other UN Charter framers neither had “the faintest interest”5 in its Preamble nor, let alone, in the two of its words in the centre of this essay. They all were involved in elaborating the “control” part of Charter, that is in its international machinery aiming at maintaining global peace and security. However, it is exactly from those two words that various demographic and hereditary implications may be drawn for international peace education, including the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies. In those Studies’ context, only 45 years later the concept of “succeeding generations” (so far faintly related to war prevention) did receive some more attention, when the 1990 “United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines)”6 emphasized in para. 15 the socialization function of family in the prevention of delinquency: “Special attention should be given to children of families affected by problems brought about by rapid and uneven economic, social and cultural change, in particular the children of indigenous, migrant and refugee families. As such changes may disrupt the social capacity of the family to secure the traditional rearing and nurturing of children, often as a result of role and culture conflict, innovative and socially constructive modalities for the socialization of children have to be designed.” Ten years later, in the “Guidelines for the prevention of urban crime”, the Economic and Social Council explicitly recommended Member States to “Consider the relevance to the crime prevention action plan of such factors as…relationships in the family, between generations or between social groups etc.”7
Schlesinger, op.cit., p. 237. Doc. 885 I/1/34, Report of Rapporteur of Committee 1 to Commission I, at p. 5, in: Documents of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, San Francisco, 1945, Volume VI, Commission I, General Provisions, London-New York, United Nations Information Organizations 1945, p. 390. 4 Ibid., p. 391. 5 Schlesinger, op. cit., p. 237. 2 3
General Assembly resolution 45/112, United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines), 14 December 1990. 6 7
ECOSOC resolution 1995/9, Annex, 24 July 1995. 2
In sum, the United Nations had paid in its legal instruments rather little rigorous attention to the meaning of “succeeding generations,” let alone to its hereditary (biological/social) meaning, including the intergenerational transmission of crime and violence between grandparents, parents and children – the core problem addressed in this essay. As of its writing, the balance of the UN’s mandate and functions involving “prevention” and “control” remains still negative not only regarding that hereditary meaning of “succeeding generations,” but also demographically and politically - despite the proclamation of the United Nations Secretary-General that “prevention is the first imperative of justice.”8 Notwithstanding the above imbalance, academic and United Nations criminology accumulated and reviewed evidence for diagnosing and countering crime of succeeding generations. The goal of this essay is to briefly show that they both inform the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies.9 Below is the contribution to them which starts with the account how those generations may be seen in the light of criminology.
2. Passing criminal traditions The biological findings The biological findings on the (anti)criminal traditions of families started emerging already in the XIXth century. Two studies of families with the fictitious names of Jukes and Kallikak presented evidence that a genetic defect passed on to offspring could condemn them to lives of crime or mental retardation. In Richard Dougdale’s10 seven-generation study (1875) of more than 1,000 descendants of the woman he called Ada Jukes (whom he dubbed the “mother of criminals”), he found 280 paupers, 60 habitual thieves, 7 murderers, 140 other criminals, 40 persons with venereal diseases, and 50 prostitutes. Henry H. Goddard11 in a six-generation study (1912) of the Kallikak family found that their members who were all related to the illegitimate son of Martin Kallikak had more criminals than did descendants of Martin’s latter marriage into a “good” family.
S/2004/616, Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council, 3 August 2004, para. 4. 9 S. Redo, The United Nations and criminology, in: C.J. Smith, S.X. Zhang, R. Barberet, Routledge Handbook of International Criminology, Routledge, London, 2010, pp. 125-133. 10 Richard Louis Dougdale, The Jukes: a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, New York Prison Association report (1875), republished in 1877 together with his Further Studies of Criminals. 11 Henry Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. MacMillan, New York, 1912. 8
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Both studies were bestsellers which bolsteredthe advocacy of eugenics. They demonstrated that traits deemed socially inferior could be passed down from one generation to another. In the United States, the interest in the Goddard's study came at a time when that country was experiencing a large influx of immigrants from Europe. The Immigration Restriction Act, passed in 1924 (which remained in effect until 1965) was influenced by the proponents of eugenics (but he did not favour immigration restrictions by national origin12). Nonetheless, the result was that many immigrants were turned away and sent back to Europe. In Germany, Die Familie Kallikak was first printed in 1914. It supported earlier German eugenic works criticized for their tenor by Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit)13, the Polish-Jewish pedagogue (author of “How to Love a Child14). In 1942 he together with the orphaned children fell victims of the Holocaust in a Nazi concentration camp.15 Goddard’s book was reprinted in 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power16. In the United States eugenics ultimately failed to explain how genes were behind the social problems it sought to solve17. However, the discussion on genes’ individual criminogenic relevance is far from over.
The social findings In 1930s dissatisfaction with the above legacy led to a development of a sociological understanding of intergenerational transmission of crime. It started with the publication of a study on criminal traditions of certain tribes in India.18 These tribes were hereditary groups that specialized in different types of crime. They had a population of 100,000 or more. These large tribes were divided into a number of Zenderland, L., Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing, The University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2001, p. 264. 13 Jörger, J. Die Familie Zero, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, einschließlich Rassenund Gesellschafts-Hygiene, 1905, pp. 494-500. 14 How to Love a Child (Jak kochać dziecko), Warszawa 1919, 2nd edition (1920) as Jak kochać dzieci, or How to Love Children), in English: How to Love a Child. The Inspirational Words by Janusz Korczak, ed. By Sandra Joseph (ttp://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/korczak/books/english/how.htm), and reedited by Sandra Josephs, as A Voice for the Child: The Inspirational Words of Janusz Korczak, Thorsons, London, 1999. 15 Falkowska, M. (ed.), Myśl pedagogiczna Janisza Korczaka. Nowe Źródła, Warszawa, Nasza Księgarnia 1983, pp. 342-343. 16 But he neither intended for his book to be connected with Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust nor with the stated but rejected by him the “final solution” by “a lethal chamber”. He rejected narrow nationalism and promoted pacifism (Zenderland, op.cit., p. 334). 17 Eugenics, Forced Sterilization, the Holocaust, and the Gene Age www.dnai.org/e/index.html?m=1,3 18 Cressey, P., The Criminal Tribes of India, Sociology and Social Research, Vol. 20, 1936, pp. 503-511. 12
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subgroups. Since many of them have abandoned criminal activities and became generally law-abiding, the conclusion resulted that crime may not be a problem of individual demoralization, but of group traditions. In addressing this conclusion, Thorsten Sellin (193819) and Edwin H. Sutherland (1942/197320) started working on a project on culture conflict and crime. They noted that in certain tribes in India, traditional religious culture clashed with the legal culture. The religious culture required killing certain outsiders, whereas the legal culture proscribed all killings. They concluded that conflicting cultures, particularly resulting from immigration in the United States, generated criminal behaviour. Thus, following one cultural code meant violating the other, Sutherland asked whether this conflict underlies all criminal behaviour. The Riyadh Guidelines answered in para. 15 that juvenile delinquency may indeed be a result of the conflict of cultures. But whether this is the case or not, for the sake of the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies, it is important to know how in that result, the transmission of criminal traditions occurs. According to Sutherland it takes place in the small groups (“primary”, “intimate”). Among such groups, family is the most important. This was documented by the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (1961-1981).21 It addressed the transmission of criminal traditions between three generations (grandparents-parentschildren) of 411 south London males, followed up from the age of 8 to48. These males (generation 2, G2) were compared with their fathers and mothers (G1), and with their biological sons and daughters (G3). The obtained results suggested that there was significant intergenerational transmission of convictions from G1 males to G2 males, and from G2 males to G3 males. Convictions of fathers still predicted convictions of sons , but the predictive efficiency was reduced. Transmission was less from G1 females to G2 males, and from G2 males to G3 females. There was little evidence of intergenerational transmission from G1 to G3, except from grandmothers to granddaughters. The degree of intergenerational transmission decreased after taking account of family, socio-economic and individual risk factors. This, suggests that these factors may be links in the chain between parent and child offending. However, the father’s convictions still predicted the son’s convictions even after controlling for these risk factors. A key policy implication is that it is important to take steps to reduce the intergenerational transmission of offending. In line with the Riyadh Guidelines, this research suggests important intervention targets such as poor parental supervision and disrupted families. By reducing family and other risk factors (individual and socioeconomic), intergenerational transmission of offending can be reduced.
Sellin, T., Social Science Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Personality and Culture 1938. Sutherland, E. H., Development of the Theory, in: Karl Schuessler (ed.) Edwin H. Sutherland on Analyzing Crime, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 13-29. 21 Farrington, D.P., Coid, J.W. & Murray J., Family factors in the intergenerational transmission of offending, Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 19 (2009), pp. 109–124. 19 20
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This finding confirmed what Sutherland argued as a core of his differential association theory, namely that the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups (family, colleagues, partners) and that a person becomes delinquent because of an "excess" of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violation of law. In other words, criminal behaviour emerges when one is exposed to more antisocial messages over prosocial messages. Sutherland argued that the concept of differential association and differential social organization could be applied to the individual level and to group-level respectively. While the former explains why any individual gravitates toward criminal behaviour, the latter explains why crime rates of different social entities different from each other's. Conversely, criminals may unlearn their behaviour, if and when they are reformed by other former criminals who exert over them their prosocial authority. Restricted to a prison setting, this reflexive reformation principle stops short of applying to broader family criminal traditions. However, at least in theory, it may be seen as something with which such traditions could be countered by the moral authority and influence of a “significant other” from the family, community and society, depending on the priority of that influence over other influences, its frequency, duration and intensity. But whether or not this may be proven, the role of family in the succeeding generations’ following of (anti)criminal traditions, has been primary and verified by other experts. The psychological verification began virtually in the ashes of the Second World War with an influential 1944 British study of 44 juvenile thieves.22 Limited in terms of numbers and method (opportunity sample) as it was, and limited as such kind of studies happen to be until this day, it found that the security of early attachment between an infant and his/her mother predicts not just how emotionally well-adjusted an infant grows as an adult, but also predicts his/her moral development. Secure relations between an infant and mother are formative for social development (popularity at school, good social skills, turn-taking, sharing) and language development (better communication). Those with insecure attachments have a higher rate of social difficulties, including antisocial behaviour.23 The study preceded the UN Social Commission’s institutional role in developmental crime control and prevention. Shortly after its establishment, in 1947 at its invitation the World Health Organization (WHO) offered the Commission to conduct a new study that would follow-up on the above findings. Four years later, as “a contribution to the UN programme for the welfare of homeless children”, the WHO published the report on Bolwby, J., Forty-four juvenile thieves: their characters and home-life, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 25 (1944), pp. 19-53. 22
Baron-Cohen, S , The Science of Evil. On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, New York, Basic Books, 2011. 23
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Maternal Care and Mental Health. The report which was a metaanalytical review of various studies on maternal deprivation, including also of the war-orphaned children. It argued that infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with them, and who remain as consistent caregivers for them some months during the infancy period, roughly six to 24 months.24 That report - a “citation classic”25 - transformed the approach to the dealing with children in hospitals and schools, by making those places more children- and parents-friendly. Generally uncomfortable with such psychological studies’ method that may conflate a symptom with a problem (lack of attachment is not a symptom of psychopathy but is psychopathy), and usually limit the studied samples to small groups, Travis Hirschi, US sociologists, alternatively tested in the late 1960s on the sample of some 4,000 US junior and high-school male students four social bonds that fostered their conformity and compliance, in terms of “attachment”, “involvement”, “commitment” and “belief”. In this competitive with Bowlby’s work “citation classic”(now in its ninth edition),26 and whose results were corroborated by other US and foreign studies,27 “attachment” (or the “bond of affection,” that is affectional indentification through which a youth is sensitive to others’ opinions (parents, peers, teachers, community leaders, etc), communicates openly and mutually respects, identifies, and values his/her relationship with them, was a driving force behind the other three bonds, the strength of all of which was statistically measured in reply to survey questions. Accordingly, the study found that the bonding process started with the “attachment” to parents. Next, it went through “commitment” - person’s rational assessment of own’s fear of law-breaking behaviour. Then it continued with “involvement” in (il)legitimate activities ("idle hands are the devil's workshop”), that is, how a person becomes involved in his/her range of social actions and relationships. Finally, the bonding process results in “belief”- the acceptance of common moral values within the society whose norms are being violated. In line with this moral/social essence of attachment, the study also found that the parents of non-delinquents were more likely to know what their children were up to when they were out of view than the parents of delinquents, suggesting that this Bowlby, J., Maternal Care and Mental Health: A Report Prepared on behalf of the World Health Organization as a Contribution to the United Nations Programme for the Welfare of Homeless Children, Geneva: World Health Organization, Department for Children and Parents: Tavistock, England, 1951, pp. 36-51. 25 It informed the next generation of psychologists and criminologists, including Terrie Moffit awarded with the “Stockholm Prize in Criminology” (2007) for her leadership role in social, psychological and biological studies of crime and human development involving the environmental and genetic risk factors for violence. 26 Hirschi, T., Causes of Delinquency, Transaction Publishers, Piscataway, N.J. 2009, pp. 3, 11 & 86-87. 27 See further: Siegel L.J., Welsh, B.C., Juvenile Delinquency. Theory, Practice and Law, Wadsworth 2011, p. 161. 24
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measure was only a proxy for the child’s “affectional identification” with their parents. The study also found that an increased affectional identification (sensitivity to the wishes and feelings of parents) with them declined the likelihood of delinquency, regardless of a number of peer delinquent friends. However, such friends matter if the attachment is stronger with them than with parents. In either case, and, paradoxically, this is a confirmation of the psychological impact of sensitivity to others’ opinions.28 The more current metaanalytical studies of the WHO also confirm such intergenerational effects. However, the Organization adds that “it is unclear whether the improvements in childhood behaviour that various interventions strive for can be linked to reduced use of violence later in life…Programmes should be encouraged to conduct evaluations that measure not only effects on violent behaviour, but also their economic costs and benefits. Although early childhood programmes have generated some positive results, the majority of evaluations have focused on…developed countries. Early childhood programmes have been implemented in developing countries… but their effect on levels of violent behaviour or its risk factors have rarely been evaluated. Owing to social and cultural differences, one cannot necessarily apply the results of research in developed countries to other parts of the world. More research is urgently needed, therefore, on the applicability and effectiveness of early childhood violence prevention programmes in developing countries.”29 In conclusion, private homes, schools and hospitals should be the places for the intergenerational transmission of legitimate aspirations, norms and values, the places for developmental crime prevention, whether psychological or/and social. While such a first-to-second generation transmission still has its various problems, it follows that to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” really starts with the intimate contacts in those places. This is a very important conclusion for the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies. 3. Countering criminal traditions Another important conclusion for them is that the progressive character of the UN Charter calls for looking at how “succeeding generations” may indeed save the world from the scourge of wars. In other words, how the UN can prevent the wars from happening, or how the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies can facilitate advancing this objective? While it is impossible to account for something that has not happened (“prevention”), the Charter’s reactive (“control”) response to the scourge of war has been normatively regulated through the provisions on its international machinery, and functionally developed by the Charter’s followers.
Gadd, D. & Jefferson, T., Psychosocial Criminology. An Introduction, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 2007, p. 26. 28
Violence Prevention. The Evidence. Preventing Violence through the Development of Safe, Stable and Nurturing Relationships between Children and their Parents and Caregivers, World Health Organization, Geneva, 2004, p.14. 29
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Its art. 55 formulates the United Nations progressive social justice objective. It laid ground for the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.30 This is a core programme as far as criminological input into the UN peacekeeping work is concerned. It is the one mandated to develop and project across the UN system a criminological message involving the anti-war role of “succeeding generations”. In their interest, already in 1947 the Programme carried out juvenile justice and trafficking-ofwomen studies, and in 1950 it produced a statistical report on the impact of the Second World War on crime.31 In the seventh decade of its existence the Programme conceptually extended the term peace. In line with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, in 2010 the President of the Security Council stated that transnational organized crime is a global threat to peace and security,32 and the General Assembly declared the centrality of criminal justice system for peace and sustainable development.33 From an analytical review of the normative and functional development of the “United Nations Peace” work,34 one can learn that when in 1946 the Programme was established, it was a normative part of the nascent UN “justice and international law” mandate. Today, this still evolving and diversified mandate (termed “criminal justice”) is a branch of a stand-alone “justice”, and an inner part of a separate “rule of law”. Functionally, in 1946, the Programme has not had any role in the Charter’s implementation. Today, the Programme is a functional part the United Nations Justice and Security Sector Reform (Security Sector Reform/SSR), a major global criminal policy overhaul in 193 Member States of the Organization, and a functional part of several other peace-related UN functions, including peace education or “UN Peace”35 (contributing to the United Nations Studies). 4. The intergenerational transmission of United Nations values Regarding those general Studies (an academic concept), and the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies specifically, in their interest and the interest of delivering the United Nations criminological message on the threats to peace caused by war and other forms of violent conflict, now considered as the “UN Peace”, this essay will now contribute to (a) clarifying, (b) reconnecting and (c) streamlining this message in terms of its intergenerational transmission. Regarding clarifying, one of the reasons for the above is the recent diplomatic gaffe of Mr. Barack Obama, the U.S. President. Awarding in 2012 a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a Polish Second World War resistance hero who delivered to the U.K. and U.S. governments his personal eyewitness accountsfrom a Art. 55, United Nations Treaty Collection, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, vol. III, paras. 73 & 74, p. 29, untreaty.un.org/cod/repertory/art55/.../rep_orig_vol3-art55_e.pdf31 Redo, op. cit., p. 56. 32 S/PRST/2010/4, Threats to international peace and security, 24 February 2010. 33 GA resolution 65/2010, The Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, 23 December 2010. 34 Harfensteller, J., The United Nations and Peace. The Evolution of an Organizational Concept, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Mein, 2011. 35 Ibid., p. 314. 30
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death camp of the Holocaust, the President referred to it as “Polish”36 rather than to the Nazi Germany-operated camp in wartime occupied Poland. In the Polish diplomatic opinion the above error amounted to “ignorance and incompetence.”37 An outraged reader added in a comment on a journalist blog: “[the President’s] Ivy League education is clearly a waste of money.”38 Such critical comments have their point. Virginia Gildersleeve’s dream that every school child in the world could commit to memory the UN Charter’s Preamble on the scourge of war and the Preamble’s text could be framed and hung in every cottage on the globe, has not yet come true. There is a confusion if not already a memory gap among the post-Second World War generation about the role of history in the life of succeeding generations. Therefore, In the interest of: (a) promoting evidence-based thinking (see the Preamble’s text on the sorrow war experience of the two world wars); (b) the preservation and the projection of the collective UN history into the future; and (c) retaining the interdependence between individual and collective memory of the UN origins and its relevance to the present times, making the transmission of the UN common values work as a vibrant interactive process rather than (and merely) passing it on as “a tradition,” is essential in a successful domestic and international rule-of-law process. This is relevant to the current youth generation, would-be policy-makers orientated by “here and now” concerns. In their memory they tend to define out or distort historical thinking as inconvenient to the learners.39 Regarding the reconnection, Cherif Bassiouni, one of the most eminent public international law experts, noted that the basic difference between bureaucratic and academic knowledge is that the former is guided by mandate and authority and the latter by concept and method.40 If such a gaffe were to be prevented, then the task of the
President Obama Presents Jan Karski with the Medal of Freedom, http://www.stateondemand.state.gov/Regional-Issues/president-obama-presents-jan-karskiwith-the-medal-of-freedom/s/4feba2c3-82bc-4c1d-a1d0-839662495593 . 37 http://seeingredaz.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/poland-obamas-comment-showsignorance-incompetence/. 38 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/president-obama-causes-outrage-withreference-to-polish-death-camp/. 39 For a more comprehensive argument, see: Dornansky, E., Welzer, H., Eine offene Geschichte: Zur kommunikativen Tradierung der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit, Tübingen: Edition diskord, 1999, esp. Einletung ( Introduction) by H. Welzer. 40 See further: Redo, op. cit. , pp. 49 & 205. 36
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United Nations Criminal Justice Studies should be to reconnect one with another, so the knowledge will not be fragmented and serve well the authority. Regarding the streamlining, besides this generic difference there is a more important difference. It makes such Studies even more needed: the current Western academic knowledge tends to be value-free, while the UN knowledge is value-laden. In other words, the essential difference between one and the other rests in the commitment to the promotion of social justice. This qualitative difference with the academic world (i.e. the United Nations’ promotion of social justice) stems from the Preamble and art. 55 of the Charter. If the Western academic knowledge were to serve better the United Nations Studies, then the commitment of the former to the latter should be more viable and both should complimentarily help one another in serving social science objective. This value-laden pursuit may not necessarily (if at all) be supported by the academic knowledge and education, and so by the students, scholars, lawyers and others in the Western world claiming political neutrality for liberal education. But, hopefully, “many graduates, both legal professionals and others, also come to understand the limits of law as an agent of social change. In most societies, mere changes in the substance of law do not by themselves create a deeper connection between lives of citizens in their local communities and the overall community of the nation.”41
5. Mentoring the next generation: how to love children and educate students? “The highest expression of human love and creativity is mentoring the next generation.”42 Corresponding with this is the child’s right to love and the right to education, have both been stated in paras. 6 and 7 of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child,43 but originally formulated by Janusz Korczak.44 Surely, it is not coincidental that Korczak’s heritage has been taken on board by the United Nations. But since the goal of this essay is to demonstrate that the academic and United Nations criminology accumulated and reviewed evidence for diagnosing and countering crime of succeeding generations, now this essay will finally demonstrate that also the very concept at the heart of childrens’ upbringing – that is the attachment of them with their care givers (esp. parents), applies also to the relationship between Gallant, K. S., Learning from communities: Lessons from India on clinical method and liberal education, in: Trubek,L.G., Cooper, J., Educating for Justice Around the World. Legal education, Legal Practice and the Community, Ashgate, Dartmouth 1999, pp. 222-232. 42 Mendizza, M., Pearce, J. Ch, Magical Parent-Magical Child The Optimum Learning Relationship Special Workshop Edition, In-Joy Publications, 2002, p. 7. 43 GA resolution 1386 (XIV), 10 December 1959. 44 Lifton, B.J. (1988) The King of Children: A biography of Janusz Korczak. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. See also: Jilek, D. The Invisible Dialogue on the Rights of the Child: Ellen Key and Janusz Korczak, Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law , Vol. 2, pp. 85-94. 41
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students and teachers. By this, this essay seeks also to document that in the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies not only the knowledge of “what”, but also the skills, that is “how”, is important. An opportunity-sample study of 244 U.S. students recently offered findings on how student-student and student-teacher friendships and attachment styles link to General Educational Development (GED) program providing high-school level academic skills. The authors statistically documented that students’ relationships with students and instructors, as well as secure attachment style were positively associated with earning a GED. More than 87 % of those who earned GEDs had a considerably greater attachment than those who did not. The study demonstrated that both student-student friendships and student-instructor relationships positively predicted attachment and subsequent GED program completion. In addition, those who had secure attachment styles had better relationships with their fellow students and instructors. These findings confirm earlier results of studies by Bowlby and Hirschi which suggested that attachment positively influences learning. Academics and practitioners may now appreciate how and why salient interpersonal relationships and attachment can promote educational attainment. These findings may be helpful to educators to identify productive means to improve students’ learning outcomes. Consequently, they can use these findings to inform instructional efforts and promote more effective learning environments.45 The above findings, published in the “The Journal of Genetic Psychology,” prompt now to return to the earlier observation involving the genes’ individual relevance to the (anti)social behaviour and learning outcomes. The earlier negative experience with eugenics must have led the experts of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to denounce the role of genes in prompting violence, still resounding elsewhere46. In its 1986 Seville Statement on Violence by anthropologists, biologists, ethnologists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists, UNESCO declared that: “it is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behaviour is genetically programmed into our human nature. While genes are involved at all levels of nervous system function, they provide a developmental potential that can be actualized only in conjunction with the ecological and social environment. While individuals vary in their Reio, T.G., Marcus, R.F., Sanderreio, J. Contribution of Student and Instructor. Relationships and Attachment Style to School Completion, The Journal of Genetic Psvchology (2009) 17 (I), pp. 53-71. 45
For the review and critique of neo-Darwinist interpretation of the biosocial sources of violence and warfare, see: Malešević, S., The Sociology of War and Violence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. 56-58. 46
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predispositions to be affected by their experience, it is the interaction between their genetic endowment and conditions of nurturance that determines their personalities. Except for rare pathologies, the genes do not produce individuals necessarily predisposed to violence. Neither do they determine the opposite. While genes are co-involved in establishing our behavioural capacities, they do not by themselves specify the outcome.”47 The now dominant view on the biological and social influences on “succeeding generations”, so far, leaves little place to explaining them in genetic terms, as clarified by the following two criminological statements: “The most significant criticism of biosocial theory has been the lack of adequate empirical testing. In most research efforts sample sizes are small and nonrepresentative,”48 and “The extent to which a biosocial perspective can inform public policy,… is not yet well known and likely will not be known for some time. Contemporary biosocial research is still in its infancy and at this point we are still trying to uncover the complex ways in which environmental factors and genetics work to produce antisocial behaviours. Even so, there is emerging evidence indicating that the biosocial perspective can be quite effective for creating programs that reduce and prevent crime and delinquency.”49 Nonetheless, in a cell biology book reviewing that emerging evidence, the little place left for the influence of individual genes on succeeding generations’ (anti)social behaviour and learning outcomes is reinterpreted: “[G]enes are important-but their importance is only realized through the influence of conscious parenting and the richness of opportunities provided by the environment.”50 Consequently, conscious parenting, that is the awareness of responsibility for one’s personal life, enables programming its conduct for oneself and for the offspring –instead of “rewards” and “punishments” through a playful fostering of their curiosity, creativity and wonder.51
6. Teaching the next generation “UN Peace”
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ID=3247&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html 48 Siegel, L. J., Criminology, 11th edition, p. 156. 47
Beaver, K.M &, Walsh, A. (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Biosocial Theories of Crime, Ashgate, 2011, p. 14 50 Lipton, B. H., The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness. Matter & Miracles, Hay House, 2008, p. 148. 51 Mendizza & Pearce, op. cit. 49
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While curiosity, creativity and wonder may be recommended for infant upbringing, the question how “UN Peace” can be thought or, generally, how the UN can be taught,52 despite numerous publications53 (also targeting children54), has neither been yet conceptualized attractively nor comprehensively reviewed and evaluated. Consequently, the reply to the question is “ambivalent,”55 partly probably because the penal history of what criminology offered as a remedy to the misbehaviour “is rather confusing.”56 Consequently, sending a clear criminal justice message across the world is the task awaiting comparative criminologists, international and criminal lawyers and communication specialists. What seems to be less confusing is that, generally, no more than 5 percent of what one learns comes from formal instruction, training, or schooling. Of the 5 percent of information, only 3 to 5 percent is remembered for any length of time. The rest what the person remembers for life comes from so called “primary learning” by quality relationships (through developing high attachment, for example).57 Educators should well optimize that max. 5 percent and with others and increase through primary learning the “UN Peace” share, because this can help to save succeeding generations for life from the scourge of war in theirs and next generation’s lifetime. Therefore one may only welcome the recent manual of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights whose Office in collaboration with a Canadian nongovernmental social justice organization Equitas. The manual helps to evaluate the effectiveness of human rights education.58 It would likewise be a welcome development if the United Nations Academic Impact Initiative which is a global initiative that aligns institutions of higher education with the United Nations in actively supporting universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, literacy, sustainability and conflict resolution, would take a lead in spearheading the use of the manual. This would surely be in the interest to the United Nations Studies. 7. Conclusion Can the United Nations be Taught? Proceedings of a Colloquium on Innovative Approaches to Teaching the UN System, held at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, Austria, 22–23 November 2008, http://www.davienna.ac.at/jart/prj3/diplomatische_akademie/resources/dbcon_def/uploads/ prj3/diplomatische_akademie%7C/UNDidaktik.pdf . 53 See, for example, Tomasevski, K., Manual on rights-based education: global human rights requirements made simple. Collaborative project between the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education and UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, UNESCO, Bangkok, 2004. 54 See: COMPASITO. Manual on Human Rights Education for Children. Edited and co-written by Flowers, N., Council of Europe, 2007. 55 Platzer, M., Can the United Nations be Taught?, in: the Proceedings, op. cit., p. 10. 56 Karabĕc, Z., Criminal policy – the purpose of punishment, in: Scheinost, M. et al., Crime from the Perspective of Criminologists, Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention, Prague 2011 p. 37. 57 Mendizza & Pearce, op. cit.. p. 27. 58 Tomasevski, op. cit. 52
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The Preamble to the UNESCO’s constitution states “If wars begin in the minds of men, then in their minds defences of peace must be constructed”. The question, if such defences already exist, remains open. In this respect, “criminology is a unique science because, being critical in nature, it should contribute to dispelling myths, distorted notions and illusions.”59 But not only to this. Its responsibility, as the responsibility of other academic disciplines, relevant entities and organizations60 is, is to contribute to the gaps in the education of succeeding generations in the interest of building comprehensive peace and security for the rule of law. The United Nations Criminal Justice Studies should enhance this contribution.
Foreword, (in): Scheinost, M. et al., op. cit., p. 15. Šturma, P., Drawing a line between the responsibility of international organization and its member states under international law, The Czech Yearbook, op. cit, p. 19. 59 60
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