Please note: The event will be an online event only.
Please only use a university or organisational address for registration. Registrations will close at 12 midday on Wednesday 25th May. The link will be sent to you later that afternoon.
This event will be recorded. If you do not wish to be part of the recording, please feel free to turn your cameras off once the talk begins. The talk will be made available on the Criminology website and YouTube channel at a later date.
It is a bedrock principle of Anglo-American criminal law that the authority to try and punish someone for a crime arises from the crime’s connection to a particular place. Thus, we assume that a person who commits a crime in some location—say, Philadelphia—can be arrested by Philadelphia police for conduct deemed criminal by the Pennsylvania legislature, prosecuted in a Philadelphia court, and punished in a Pennsylvania prison. The idea that criminal law is tied to geography in this way is called the territoriality principle. This idea is so familiar that it usually goes unstated.
In reality, however, territorialism is a norm in decline. Although the territoriality principle is central to criminal law ideology, the borders of criminal law have faded over the past century. In practice, new legal rules and enforcement practices have unmoored criminal law from its borders, empowering police and prison officials to determine the outer limits of the power to punish.
This talk will examine the erosion of territorialism, and its implications. Drawing on a broad and eclectic set of primary sources—from penal codes and police manuals to interviews and materials obtained through open records requests—it will show that domestic criminal law is much less territorial than conventional wisdom holds. It will explain why these developments undermine classic theories of criminal law. And it will explore the normative question: just how far do we want criminal laws to reach?
Biography:
Emma Kaufman received her JD from Yale Law School and her DPhil from Oxford, where she was as Marshall and Clarendon Scholar. Her 2015 book, Punish and Expel: Border Control, Nationalism, and the New Purpose of the Prison(Oxford), examines the treatment of foreign nationals in the British prison system. She is currently Assistant Professor of Law at New York University Law School. Emma's research focuses on the intersection of criminal, immigration, constitutional and administrative law.
Registration is now open. Please use the registration link at the top of the page.
