Book Review: Kjersti Lohne, Advocates of Humanity: Human rights NGOs in International Criminal Justice
| Author | Polina Malkova |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474520960040 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
groups; as such, it is not understood as any more nor less than other mechanisms (e.g.
massive incarceration, reductions of thresholds of punishment) designed to disempower
those minorities. Second, and to deepen understanding of the social function of disenfran-
chisement, one must pay attention to the extensive and influential critical theory literature
on what it means to be excluded from your own community: to be included but not
belong. In this line, the electoral exclusion of criminals may express, but also transcends,
the idea that there are tight differences between the ‘good’members of the community
and ‘the others’, an idea that strongly underpins social validation of the state’s punitive
apparatus. Criminals’superfluity as members of the community of citizens from which
they are expelled is transformed paradoxically into utility; the threat they pose to the
cohesion and purity of the community is transformed into part of the community’s cohe-
sion and purity. The community is both transformed and reinforced through the exclusion
of the undeserving. Third, we might reclaim the perspective of criminals and prisoners as
political subjects. The boom in the debate on disenfranchisement given by judicial deci-
sions prompted by prisoners’claims reveals a phenomenon of political activism. By ques-
tioning their marginalization, those who are excluded can be agents of political change
and institutional transformation. The dynamic dimension of disenfranchisement por-
trayed by the political debate generated by these challenges is an important feature of
any analyses on this topic.
This book makes an important contribution to the debate on criminal disenfranchise-
ment, presenting a thought-provoking argument that will surely make discussion on crim-
inal disenfranchisement to continue being of great academic and political interest. In
providing insights on questions of how to connect membership, citizenship and democ-
racy with criminal law and punishment theory, the argument of the book identifies the
crucial element of this practice. Its clarity and carefully framed arguments make it a
useful and worthwhile read for political theorists, criminal law scholars and others inter-
ested in the topic.
ORCID iD
Pablo Marshall https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8347-4620
Pablo Marshall
Universidad Austral de Chile, Chile
Email: pmarshall@uach.cl
Kjersti Lohne, Advocates of Humanity: Human rights NGOs in International
Criminal Justice, Clarendon Studies in Criminology. Oxford University
Press: Oxford, 2019; 288 pp. ISBN 9780198818748, £80.00 (hbk)
In recent decades, the expansion of large-scale international crimes, such as genocide and
war crimes, has challenged the well-established criminological idea that the power to
punish lies within the nation state. Faced with such heinous crimes, domestic legal
Book Reviews 145
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