Human Rights and Non‐Discrimination in the ‘War on Terror’ by Daniel Moeckli
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2009.00755_2.x |
| Author | Ben Saul |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
tions levels of punishment appear to beprimarily in£uenced by factors other than
crime levels (and vice versa). However, whilst of course not wishing to suggest
that levels of punishment can in any way be reduced to some simple response to
levels of crime, I nevertheless think that a fully persuasive account of di¡erent
penal arrangements needs to take ‘crime’ into consideration.
Second, and crucially, work in this ¢eld needs to develop broader and more
subtle indices of ‘punitiveness’. Much literature relies on comparative incarcera-
tion rates as its primary ^ sometimes sole ^ indicator of the extent and nature of
punishment.Whilstunderstandablethis is inadequate. In future scholars will need
both to consider in detail the nature as well as the frequency of imprisonment
and, possibly moreimportantly,punishment beyond theprison as well as broader
issues concerning the changing nature of social control more generally. It seems
morethan plausible thatthese too can and should be relatedto the di¡ering struc-
tures of political economy thatare visible acrossliberal democracies (and beyond).
In short, therefore, Lacey’s thoughtful and original thesis provides a research
agenda fora whole generationof new comparative scholars.We can onlyhope that
they decide to rise to the challenge.
Tim Newburn
n
Daniel Moeckli, Human Rights and Non-Discrimination in the ‘War on
Terror’,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 250 pp, hb d60.00.
One of the central human rights concerns in the post-9/11 response to terrorism
has been the spectre of arbitrary discrimination against minorities, foreign
nationals andparticular racial,ethnic or religious groups. Unjusti¢able or unlaw-
ful discrimination attacks the core of human dignity, since it reduces the human
person to an indistinguishable part of a real or imagined collectivity and targets
that person foradverse treatment based on those blanketcharacteristics.
From a social perspective, such discrimination alienates and marginalises out-
siders while reinforcing a negatively-de¢ned solidarity amongst whatever main-
stream political community is identifying and prosecuting di¡erence. From a
prudential perspective, discriminatory measures are often ine¡ective ^ as when
blanket treatment hoovers up whole communities of innocents andwastes scarce
law enforcement resources ^ or counter-productive, as when the experience of
marginalisation radicalises disa¡ected sectors of minoritycommunities.
Alarm about racial or religious pro¢ling ^ particularly of Islamic communities
or those with Arab backgrounds ^ is understandable in a post-9/11 world of
aggressive, exceptional counter-terrorism measures. Legally speaking, however,
the issue is more complex than human rights advocates sometimes make out, for
not all discrimination is unlawful, and some may even be desirable to secure
countervailing social interests. There may sometimes be objective and reasonable
justi¢cations for certain kinds of di¡erentiation based on group attributes.The
n
Mannheim Centre for Criminology,London School of Economics.
Reviews
513
r2009 The Authors. Journal Compilationr20 09 The Modern LawReview Limited.
(2009) 72(3) 507^518
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