Criminal Policy

In a democratic society, the fight against terrorism is based almost exclusively on crime prevention. If the prevention of terrorism is addressed properly, there will be no need for a military strike because terrorists will not have the opportunity to carry out their goals and activities. One of the most related aspects of terrorism is the financing of its perpetrators and their activities. Accordingly, the present article aims to investigate the prevention of terrorist financing from the perspective of global criminology. Given that crime prevention is a significant component of criminal policy, which is aimed to limit the opportunity for perpetrators by making impossible or difficult the possibility of their criminal activities, the focus of preventive measures places on non-punitive sanctions or methods. However, criminalization of terrorism and its financing could be defined as a preventive measures based on penal mechanism, called ‘reactive prevention’. Consequently, an ideal pattern for international prevention of terrorism and terrorist financing is to promote the legislation within the domestic legal systems of all countries in the international community. By recognizing internationally-recognized norms and standards and implementing them in countries’ domestic legal systems, it could be expected that terrorism and terrorist financing would be prevented in a more effective manner.  

The present study shows that abolitionist feminists, inspired by Foucault's biopolitical and agonistic analysis of power and his view on the capacity of modern power (bio-power) in the construction of subjectivity and the necessity of resistance against all forms of subjectivity as forms of subjugation, have proposed some abolitionist feminist criminal strategies in the fight against sexual violence against women as resistance strategies to subjectivity. The purpose of the study is to consider the inspiration of abolitionist feminist criminal strategies from Foucault's theory of power and provide two concrete examples of these strategies by using the methodology of critical discourse analysis of bio-power. The current study analyzed two abolitionist feminist-Foucauldian criminal strategies: Chloe Taylor's negative abolitionist feminist criminal strategy (2019) and Holly Henderson's positive abolitionist feminist criminal strategy (2007). Explaining the process of construction of the sex-delinquent subject and the process of construction of feminine subjectivity and providing ways to fight against these two forms of subjectivity, as forms of subjugation that are constructed by bio-power, are the principal axes of analysis in these Foucauldian abolitionist criminal strategies. The result of the current study is that Taylor, with a Foucauldian approach, shows how bio-power produces sex-delinquent subjects in two ways: the normalization of sexuality and the normalization of sexual violence in prison. According to Taylor, the only way to end sexual violence is to subvert the sex-delinquent subject as a form of subjectivity, and the only way to do this is to abolish prison. Henderson, with a Foucauldian approach, shows how bio-power produces feminine subjectivity through the normalization of sexuality, and this feminine subjectivity is the reason for the continuation of sexual violence. Henderson argues that to prevent sexual violence, the feminine subjectivity must be deconstructed, or in other words, the female body should be re-conceptualized in the structure of violence by recognizing the capacity of resistance in the female body and her agency. Therefore, inspired by Foucault's view on the agonistic conception of power, she proposed a positive abolitionist criminal strategy by promoting physical feminism and self-defence. Taylor calls for the implementation of transformative justice as an alternative to criminal justice to combat sexual violence, and Henderson calls for the implementation of preventive justice, a type of physical feminism, to prevent sexual violence. The research findings confirm the feasibility and applicability of Taylor and Henderson's strategies in the context of societal models of criminal policy, which seek to combat or prevent crimes outside the state and the criminal justice system. In comparison between these two strategies, transformative justice has been more developed and applicable.