Previous congresses addressed the following topics:

2024: What is the criminal justice system worth?

What is the criminal justice system worth? Values ​​are omnipresent in the criminal justice system: understood as a system, the criminal justice establishes and reflects social values ​​and functions as well as the respective zeitgeist. The people who run the criminal justice system on a daily basis, for their part, hold a variety of values ​​towards criminals or victims. In contrast, the costs of the criminal justice system are hardly ever reflected, neither in a material nor in a symbolic sense. Even rarer are considerations about the connection between intangible values ​​and the accounting expenses of the various criminal justice institutions: How are social and state resources distributed, and what role does the criminal justice system play in this? Are the symbolic values ​​of the criminal justice system being achieved with the expenditure made? To what extent do they balance each other? Could they also be achieved with less resources?

The 2024 Congress of the Swiss Group of Criminology dealt with the macroeconomic dimensions of the criminal justice system, treated questions of its material and symbolic costs, discussed economics of sanctions and finally turned to the costs of deprivation of liberty. In 2024, the Swiss Group of Criminology celebrate its 50th anniversary. On this occasion, conferences on Thursday afternoon were dedicated to the project “Criminology in Switzerland – History, Status, Future”.

Ahmed Ajil, Jörg Arnold, Daniel Fink, Françoise Genillod

 

2023: no conference was held.

 

2022: ALTERNATIVES. From alternative sanctions to alternative criminology

Criminal justice is constantly being questioned: for some it is too lenient, for others it is unable to achieve its goals (prevention of crime, rehabilitation of the convicts, etc.). For others, it is counterproductive because it encourages the accused to lie rather than admit their crimes, to the detriment of the victims. And finally criminal justice is not able to convince the public. So the critics are numerous; but what do they suggest as alternatives? This question was at the heart of the discussions of the congress of 2022.

When one speaks of alternatives, one thinks above all of alternatives to imprisonment. However, going a step further, why not consider alternatives for sanctions or even the criminal justice system as a whole? Then you find yourself in the world of ideas of alternative criminology.

These questions about the alternatives lead us to a debate about the alternatives to prison, then more generally to the alternatives to penal sanctions, and finally to alternatives to the penal system as a whole. Finally, alternative forms to traditional criminology have also to be discussed. On the one hand, these relate to research into forms of deviant behavior that have not yet been criminalized, among other things with the aim of creating new criminal offenses (e.g. ecocide); on the other hand, these alternative forms of criminology consider fundamentally alternative legal systems in which criminal law is no longer needed.

The organizing committee was once more happy that the 2022 congress of the Swiss Group of Criminology enabled a fruitful dialogue between the various disciplines and between practice and science - and this in the open and relaxed atmosphere that characterizes this event in Interlaken.

Ahmed Ajil, André Kuhn, Christian Schwarzenegger, Joëlle Vuille.

 

2021: From Repression to Prevention

2020: Criminal Justice between artificial intelligence and predictive algorithmes

2019: From rehabilitation to the zero-risk-society

2018: Crime, criminal Justice and federalisme

2017: Criminal justice – individuals – public opinion

2016: Crime policies, Evaluations and reform of penal law

2015: Truth, deception and lies

2014: Sexuality, deviance and delinquancy

2013: Migration, criminality and criminal law: myths and realities

2012: Threatened or threatening security?

2011: Criminel justice and public discourse: justice between carot and stick

2010: Criminal justice: from claims to results