Dirk Van Zyl Smit
Biographic Data
| ID | 4091646 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dirk Van Zyl Smit |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dirk Van Zyl |
| FAMILY NAME | Smit |
| SIGNATURE | SMIT D Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5540-2897 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Human Rights Standards as a Bar to Extradition from the European Union to the United Kingdom
Since 1 January 2021, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union has regulated extradition to and from the United Kingdom and Member States of the European Union. A recent judgment of a German court denying extradition of a suspect to the United Kingdom illustrates the subtle differences between the terms and operation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement Warrant and those of the European Arrest Warran…
Life Imprisonment in Asia
Dignity unlocked? The Nelson Mandela Rules as a key to the transnational legal ordering of imprisonment
This paper explains how the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (UNSMR), known since their 2015 amendment as the Nelson Mandela Rules, have become an international instrument regulating imprisonment. This explanation deals with the emergence of the original UNSMR and the process that led to their amendment. It pays particular attention to the impact of ideas about how prisons should ideally function, developed in …
The Impact of Covid-19 on Prison Conditions and Penal Policy
The Impact of COVID-19 on Prison Conditions and Penal Policy presents the results of a worldwide exchange of information on the impact of COVID-19 in prisons. It also focuses on the human rights questions that have been raised during the pandemic, relating to the treatment of prisoners in institutions for both juveniles and adults worldwide. The prison population rate of England and Wales doubled between 1994 and 2010, remaining fairly stable aft…
The European Human Rights System and the Right to Life Seen through Suicide Prevention in Places of Detention
This paper analyses the shortcomings of European suicide prevention policy in places of detention, a topic that has been neglected in the European legal literature. Four interrelated characteristics of the suicide prevention policies developed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are responsible for the failures of these policies. First, the risk-based approach relies on individual risk calculations by national detention authorities to t…
Life Imprisonment in Asia
Introduction
International audience
Can European human rights instruments limit the power of the national state to punish? A tale of two Europes
The power to punish is traditionally seen as an essential prerogative of the national state. Over the last three decades, judicial and standard-setting bodies of the Council of Europe (CoE) have sought increasingly, at a regional level, to monitor and control the power of European states to punish. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has become an increasingly important penal actor, fostering a common approach to transnational forms of criminali…
The Paradox of Scottish Life Imprisonment
More people are serving life sentences in Scotland as a proportion of the national population than in any other country in Europe. Yet , in many respects, Scotland claims to adopt a welfarist rather than a penal approach to criminal justice. This paper uses a wide range of data to explain the factors underpinning this paradox. It focuses on key aspects of the imposition and implementation of life sentences, providing, for the first time, an analy…
Life Imprisonment
Life imprisonment has replaced the death penalty as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide. Consequently, it has become the leading issue of international criminal justice reform. In the first survey of its kind, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights–based reappraisal of this harsh punishment
Prison Labour
Austria, Arno Pilgram Botswana and ghana, Kwamre Frimpong England and Wales, Jon Vagg and Ursula Smartt Germany, Frieder Dunkel Hungary, Frenec Nagy Israel, Leslie ebba japan, Yuichi kaido and Katsushiko Iguchi Namibia, Gail Super the Netherlands - work in the Dutch prison (Constantijn Kelk), Labour imposed as a criminal punishment outside the Dutch prison (Miranda Boone) Poland, Zbigniew Holda South Africa, Dirk van Zyl Smit Spain, Esther Gimene…
Human Dignity and Life Imprisonment
All Christians and men of good will are called today to fight not only for the abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, but also in order to improve prison conditions, with respect for the human dignity of the people deprived of their freedom. And I link this to life imprisonment. A short time ago the life sentence was removed from the Vatican’s Criminal Code. A life sentence is just a death penalty in disgu…
One cannot legislate kindness’
Non-custodial sanctions, particularly those that are implemented in the community, have different historical roots in common- and civil-law jurisdictions. Nevertheless, various European instruments seek to shape the imposition and implementation of such sanctions uniformly across the continent. These instruments reflect an apparent consensus about penal values, culminating in 1992 with the adoption of the European Rules on Community Sanctions and…
Whole Life Sentences and the Tide of European Human Rights Jurisprudence
In Vinter and Others v United Kingdom,1 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that all offenders sentenced to life imprisonment had a right to both a prospect of release and a review of their sentence. Failure to provide for these twin rights meant that the applicants had been deprived of their right under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishme…
Regulation of Prison Conditions
Prisons in modern societies are complex bureaucracies that are subject to regulation through a range of external monitoring and internal inspection mechanisms. Internal inspections are closely connected to the bureaucracies that manage individual prison systems. External monitoring is conducted by international, regional, and national organizations. In theory, international monitoring by organs of the United Nations has a worldwide reach, but its…
The implementation of youth imprisonment and constitutional law in Germany
This article considers the impact that constitutional law can have on penal policy through an analysis of current developments in the law governing youth prisons in Germany. It sketches the emergence of constitutional guidelines for the development of German prison law generally and then pays close attention to a recent decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of current provisions on the implementation of yout…
The Abolition of Capital Punishment for Persons Under the Age of Eighteen Years in the United States of America. What Next
Most readers of the Human Rights Law Review will have little difficulty with the outcome of the recent decision of the US Supreme Court (‘Court’) in Roper v Simmons.1 The conclusion of the Court was that the death penalty may not be imposed on persons who were below the age of 18 years when they committed their offence. 2 But then most readers of this Review are probably unsympathetic to the death penalty in all its forms. In the context of the U…
The Abolition of Capital Punishment for Persons Under the Age of Eighteen Years in the United States of America. What Next
Journal Article The Abolition of Capital Punishment for Persons Under the Age of Eighteen Years in the United States of America. What Next? Get access Dirk van Zyl Smit Dirk van Zyl Smit * Professor, Universities of Cape Town and Nottingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Rights Law Review, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 393–401, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngi024 Published: 01 June 2005
International Imprisonment
Every State in the modern world has a prison system, established and purportedly administered in terms of formal legal rules. Most such systems house both sentenced and unsentenced prisoners and have minimum standards and rules that are common to all prisoners. Although there is now a considerable body of international law that aims to provide a human rights framework for the recognition of the rights of all prisoners, the universality of the pri…
Disproportionate Sentences as Human Rights Violations
The article explores the concepts of disproportionality and gross disproportionality in sentencing. Several constitutions or human rights documents prohibit grossly disproportionate sentences, either expressly or impliedly. The draft constitution of the European Union has a Charter of Fundamental Rights that includes the right not to be subjected to a disproportionate sentence. The possible meaning and application of this are discussed by referen…
Punishment and Human Rights in International Criminal Justice
PUNISHMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE Get access Dirk van Zyl Smit Dirk van Zyl Smit Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Rights Law Review, Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 2002, Pages 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/2.1.1 Published: 01 March 2002
Abolishing Life Imprisonment
Mandatory Sentences
The Place of Criminal Law in Contempory Crime Control Strategies
No Abstract
Focus
(2000). Focus: The Constitutional Court's 1999 Term. South African Journal on Human Rights: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 283-371
Regulation of Prison Conditions
Prisons in modern societies are complex bureaucracies that are subject to regulation through a range of external monitoring and internal inspection mechanisms. Internal inspections are closely connected to the bureaucracies that manage individual prison systems. External monitoring is conducted by international, regional, and national organizations. In theory, international monitoring by organs of the United Nations has a worldwide reach, but its…
International Imprisonment
Every State in the modern world has a prison system, established and purportedly administered in terms of formal legal rules. Most such systems house both sentenced and unsentenced prisoners and have minimum standards and rules that are common to all prisoners. Although there is now a considerable body of international law that aims to provide a human rights framework for the recognition of the rights of all prisoners, the universality of the pri…
Abolishing Life Imprisonment
The Paradox of Scottish Life Imprisonment
More people are serving life sentences in Scotland as a proportion of the national population than in any other country in Europe. Yet , in many respects, Scotland claims to adopt a welfarist rather than a penal approach to criminal justice. This paper uses a wide range of data to explain the factors underpinning this paradox. It focuses on key aspects of the imposition and implementation of life sentences, providing, for the first time, an analy…
Criminological ideas and the South African transition
The struggles surrounding apartheid and the quest for democracy have had an important impact on the development of criminological thought in South Africa. This paper describes the three major tendencies in South African criminological thought: the formerly dominant Afrikaner nationalist criminology, legal reformism and a critical criminology with a commitment to democratic and communitarian practice. It traces the opportunities for development th…
Legal Standards and the Limits of Community Sanctions
The European Human Rights System and the Right to Life Seen through Suicide Prevention in Places of Detention
This paper analyses the shortcomings of European suicide prevention policy in places of detention, a topic that has been neglected in the European legal literature. Four interrelated characteristics of the suicide prevention policies developed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are responsible for the failures of these policies. First, the risk-based approach relies on individual risk calculations by national detention authorities to t…
One cannot legislate kindness’
Non-custodial sanctions, particularly those that are implemented in the community, have different historical roots in common- and civil-law jurisdictions. Nevertheless, various European instruments seek to shape the imposition and implementation of such sanctions uniformly across the continent. These instruments reflect an apparent consensus about penal values, culminating in 1992 with the adoption of the European Rules on Community Sanctions and…
Whole Life Sentences and the Tide of European Human Rights Jurisprudence
In Vinter and Others v United Kingdom,1 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that all offenders sentenced to life imprisonment had a right to both a prospect of release and a review of their sentence. Failure to provide for these twin rights meant that the applicants had been deprived of their right under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishme…
The implementation of youth imprisonment and constitutional law in Germany
This article considers the impact that constitutional law can have on penal policy through an analysis of current developments in the law governing youth prisons in Germany. It sketches the emergence of constitutional guidelines for the development of German prison law generally and then pays close attention to a recent decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of current provisions on the implementation of yout…
Disproportionate Sentences as Human Rights Violations
The article explores the concepts of disproportionality and gross disproportionality in sentencing. Several constitutions or human rights documents prohibit grossly disproportionate sentences, either expressly or impliedly. The draft constitution of the European Union has a Charter of Fundamental Rights that includes the right not to be subjected to a disproportionate sentence. The possible meaning and application of this are discussed by referen…
Mandatory Sentences
South African Prisons and International Law
(1988). South African Prisons and International Law. South African Journal on Human Rights: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 21-36
Normal’ Prisons in an ‘Abnormal’ Society
Cases and Comments
Cases and Comments
Assessors and Criminal Justice
Normal’ Prisons in an ‘Abnormal’ Society
Cases and Comments
Leave of Absence for West German Prisoners
Over the past two decades, the principles and practices entailed in the granting of leave of absence to prisoners in West Germany have undergone a series of important changes. The reformulation of the law to make resocialisation the key criterion for leave of absence to be granted was challenged when several ex-Nazi war criminals applied for leave. Despite the general success of the policy, successive reinterpretations of the new laws to preclude…
South African Prisons and International Law
(1988). South African Prisons and International Law. South African Journal on Human Rights: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 21-36
Legal Standards and the Limits of Community Sanctions
The Ninth United Nations Crime Congress (1995)4
Constitutional Jurisprudence and Proportionality in Sentencing
369 D. van Zyl Smit1 Constitutional Jurisprudence and Proportionality in Sentencing 1. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT In 1688 the English Bill of Rights outlawed 'cruell and unusuall Punishments' 2 In this re- spect, the United Kingdom is the forerunner of the many modem states with written constitu- tions which empower courts to test legislative, executive and judicial decisions against an explicit constitutional standard. Variations on this prohibi…
Changing Prison Life
Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Departures from them in Substantial and Compelling Circumstances
Criminological ideas and the South African transition
The struggles surrounding apartheid and the quest for democracy have had an important impact on the development of criminological thought in South Africa. This paper describes the three major tendencies in South African criminological thought: the formerly dominant Afrikaner nationalist criminology, legal reformism and a critical criminology with a commitment to democratic and communitarian practice. It traces the opportunities for development th…
Mandatory Sentences
The Place of Criminal Law in Contempory Crime Control Strategies
No Abstract
Focus
(2000). Focus: The Constitutional Court's 1999 Term. South African Journal on Human Rights: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 283-371
Abolishing Life Imprisonment
Punishment and Human Rights in International Criminal Justice
PUNISHMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE Get access Dirk van Zyl Smit Dirk van Zyl Smit Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Rights Law Review, Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 2002, Pages 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/2.1.1 Published: 01 March 2002
Disproportionate Sentences as Human Rights Violations
The article explores the concepts of disproportionality and gross disproportionality in sentencing. Several constitutions or human rights documents prohibit grossly disproportionate sentences, either expressly or impliedly. The draft constitution of the European Union has a Charter of Fundamental Rights that includes the right not to be subjected to a disproportionate sentence. The possible meaning and application of this are discussed by referen…
The Abolition of Capital Punishment for Persons Under the Age of Eighteen Years in the United States of America. What Next
Most readers of the Human Rights Law Review will have little difficulty with the outcome of the recent decision of the US Supreme Court (‘Court’) in Roper v Simmons.1 The conclusion of the Court was that the death penalty may not be imposed on persons who were below the age of 18 years when they committed their offence. 2 But then most readers of this Review are probably unsympathetic to the death penalty in all its forms. In the context of the U…
The Abolition of Capital Punishment for Persons Under the Age of Eighteen Years in the United States of America. What Next
Journal Article The Abolition of Capital Punishment for Persons Under the Age of Eighteen Years in the United States of America. What Next? Get access Dirk van Zyl Smit Dirk van Zyl Smit * Professor, Universities of Cape Town and Nottingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Rights Law Review, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 393–401, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngi024 Published: 01 June 2005
International Imprisonment
Every State in the modern world has a prison system, established and purportedly administered in terms of formal legal rules. Most such systems house both sentenced and unsentenced prisoners and have minimum standards and rules that are common to all prisoners. Although there is now a considerable body of international law that aims to provide a human rights framework for the recognition of the rights of all prisoners, the universality of the pri…
The implementation of youth imprisonment and constitutional law in Germany
This article considers the impact that constitutional law can have on penal policy through an analysis of current developments in the law governing youth prisons in Germany. It sketches the emergence of constitutional guidelines for the development of German prison law generally and then pays close attention to a recent decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of current provisions on the implementation of yout…
Regulation of Prison Conditions
Prisons in modern societies are complex bureaucracies that are subject to regulation through a range of external monitoring and internal inspection mechanisms. Internal inspections are closely connected to the bureaucracies that manage individual prison systems. External monitoring is conducted by international, regional, and national organizations. In theory, international monitoring by organs of the United Nations has a worldwide reach, but its…
Whole Life Sentences and the Tide of European Human Rights Jurisprudence
In Vinter and Others v United Kingdom,1 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that all offenders sentenced to life imprisonment had a right to both a prospect of release and a review of their sentence. Failure to provide for these twin rights meant that the applicants had been deprived of their right under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishme…
Human Dignity and Life Imprisonment
All Christians and men of good will are called today to fight not only for the abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, but also in order to improve prison conditions, with respect for the human dignity of the people deprived of their freedom. And I link this to life imprisonment. A short time ago the life sentence was removed from the Vatican’s Criminal Code. A life sentence is just a death penalty in disgu…
Political science (35 works) · Law (30 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Criminology (21 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Prison (14 works) · Human rights (13 works) · Psychology (11 works) · History (10 works)