FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
Below are my forthcoming publications, available for download here as post-prints. A full list of my publications is available on my faculty website. Pre-print downloads are also available on my SSRN and academia.edu pages.
LIFE IMPRISONMENT IN HONG KONG
Dirk van Zyl Smit, Catherine Appleton and Giao Vucong (eds), Life Imprisonment in Asia (Palgrave MacMillan 2022, forthcoming)
Despite the hardening local political context, life imprisonment laws and practices in Hong Kong remain relatively liberal by common law standards. This chapter first describes the legal position of life imprisonment in Hong Kong since the handover of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, by assessing life-eligible crimes, types of life sentences, constraints on judicial decision-making and possibilities for eventual release. The chapter then situates Hong Kong’s actual use of life imprisonment since 1997 within the worldwide practice of life imprisonment, particularly that of common law jurisdictions including England and Wales. Given the rarity of ‘de facto’ life sentences, the chapter’s analysis focuses on mandatory and discretionary formal life terms pronounced by the Hong Kong courts, and their consideration by the Long-term Sentences Review Board – Hong Kong’s answer to a parole board for life-sentenced prisoners. Finally, the chapter comments on the prospective impact on life imprisonment, if any, of the recent authoritarian turn brought to Hong Kong law and politics by the Beijing-drafted National Security Law (June 2020), plans for further Basic Law article 23 legislation, and the ongoing prosecutions of anti-government protesters after major social unrest between 2014 and 2020.
HOLDOUTS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC: EXPLAINING DEATH PENALTY RETENTION IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA AND TONGA
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, Forthcoming 2022, with Andrew Novak
The South Pacific forms a cohesive region with broadly similar cultural attributes, legal systems, and colonial histories. A comparative analysis starts from the assumption that these countries should also have similar criminal justice policies. However, until 2022 both Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Tonga were retentionist death penalty outliers in the South Pacific, a region home to seven other fully abolitionist members of the United Nations. In this article we use the comparative method to explain why PNG and Tonga have pursued a different death penalty trajectory than their regional neighbours. Eschewing the traditional social science explanations for death penalty retention, we suggest two novel explanations for ongoing retention in PNG and Tonga: the law and order crisis in the former, and the traditionally powerful monarchy in the latter.