By Jen Snowball, Alan Collins&Craig Bickerton

Cultural heritage is an important part of the capital of developing countries that can be leveraged for sustainable development. However, it also needs protection as the rise in the illegal trade of cultural artefacts shows. South Africa as an example of a middle-income African country that seeks to promote cultural heritage for development. As part of the attempt to preserve cultural capital, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) is tasked with the protection of cultural heritage that is of special cultural, historical, aesthetic or technical importance to the country, and is thus part of the “national estate”. SAHRA adjudicates applications for the permanent export of cultural artefacts, guided by national policy that defines the attributes of artefacts of national importance. There are also attempts to bypass SAHRA adjudication through illegal smuggling of important art and artefacts, which SAHRA also tracks through a database of artefacts reported stolen. This study analyses the way that SAHRA has applied the policy to make decisions about permanent export applications of cultural heritage artefacts, as well as the attributes of those artefacts reported stolen and thus lost to the national estate. Results showed that the SAHRA permit system seems to be providing effective protection for some of South Africa’s cultural heritage, but only 4% of applications were for art and artefacts representing black African cultures.

Cogent Social Sciences 

Volume 9, 2023 - Issue 1

By Sarah J Summers.

From the introduction:

Sentencing law and theory is closely bound up with the justification of punishment. 1 It is thus unsurprising that sentencing theory is generally perceived as falling squarely within the domain of moral philosophy. 2 Much of the debate has focused on whether retribution or consequentialist notions of deterrence or rehabilitation should serve as the principal aim on which the sentencing system is based. There are numerous articles by proponents of the various theories explaining why their theory should provide the primary basis for the determination of the sentence. 3 The importance of the moral philosophical discussion transcends national boundaries. Despite considerable diversity in the legal cultures and traditions of the various legal systems, ‘[p]rinciples of uniformity and retributive proportionality are now recognised to some extent in almost all systems, but sentences in these systems are also designed to prevent crime by means of deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation’.4 Whereas broadly ‘correctionalist’ accounts of punishment underpinned the penal welfare model of punishment for much of the twentieth century, 5 the ‘just deserts’ movement 6 of the 1980s was in line with a transfer of focus away from the individualized treatment of offenders and towards a vision of punishment which not only favoured a more standardized approach to the treatment of offenders, but which also expressly legitimized retributivist penalties and practices…..

London Oxford. 2022. 280p.

By Sylvia Walby, Philippa Olive, Jude Towers, Brian Francis, Sofia Strid, Andrea Krizsán, Emanuela Lombardo, Corinne May-Chahal, Suzanne Franzway, David Sugarman, Bina Agarwal and Jo Armstrong

Rape shatters lives. Its traumatising effects can linger for many years after the immediate pain and suffering. Rape is a consequence and a cause of gender inequality. It is an injury to health; a crime; a violation of women’s human rights; and costly to both the economy and society. Stopping rape requires changes to many policies and practices. There is no simple solution; rather, a myriad of reforms are needed to prevent rape. New policies are being innovated around the world, north and south, which are often intended to prevent rape and to support victims/survivors simultaneously. This book provides an overview of the current best practice from around the world for ending rape.

Policy Press 2015, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data, 307?

By Jesse O.. Stutman

Can crime be cured—or must it always be punished?

In Curing the Criminal: A Treatise on the Philosophy and Practices of Modern Correctional Methods, Jesse O. Stutsman offers one of the most ambitious reformist visions of the early twentieth century. Writing in an age of optimism about science and psychology, Stutsman argues that offenders are not beyond redemption but can be guided, educated, and rehabilitated. He calls for prisons to function as clinics, where work, education, and moral training replace idleness and despair. His treatise blends philosophy with practical strategies, insisting that true justice requires transformation, not vengeance.

Paired in spirit with later works such as Graeme Newman’s The Punishment Response, which reveals the deep human roots of our urge to punish, Stutsman’s book invites readers to reconsider the purpose of punishment itself. Should society cling to retribution, or strive toward cure? Nearly a century after its first appearance, this question is more urgent than ever.

Both a historical landmark and a timeless challenge, Curing the Criminal reminds us that the measure of a civilization lies in how it treats its most troubled members.

Macmillan, 1926,Read-Me.Org 2025. 276 pages

By Montagu Saunders.

It needs a considerable amount of assurance to add yet another book to the comparatively long list of those which have been written upon the subject of Dickens's unfinished story, and it is no sufficient justification to assert that the writer is sincerely convinced that his contribution to the discussion will afford some assistance in the solution of the problem, seeing that practically everyone who has ventilated his ideas upon the subject has expressed a similar conviction. Proctor, for instance, who was the first to examine Edwin Drood in a quasi-scientific way, was absolutely satisfied that in identifying Datchery with Edwin, he had discovered the " mystery " which Dickens had taken such pains to hide, and so strongly did he feel that his solution was correct, that he exhibited considerable impatience with those who failed to swallow it whole. Mr J. Cuming Walters, again, the originator of the highly ingenious Helena-Datchery theory, is equally convinced that he has unearthed Dickens's secret, and, like Proctor, he has supported his views by means of numerous arguments drawn from the text, which, if they do not carry conviction to every mind, are nevertheless sufficiently weighty to call for very careful examination, more particularly as they have succeeded in securing as adherents of the theory two such acute critics and eminent scholars as Dr Henry Jackson and Sir W. R. Nicoll. In these circumstances the present writer considers that it would be presumption on his part to express any definite opinion as to the accuracy of his own conclusions, and he feels that some apology is needed for the dogmatism which, upon a re-reading of this little essay, seems to him at times to be only too apparent.

Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1914. 184p.

By Albert Holland Rhodes.

A Strange Tale Taken from the Notes and Memoirs of Hadlock Jones by his friend, Dr. Lawrence L. Langdon. “In 1883 a party of three English adventurers penetrated into the heart of Maori land. They tell of a splendid race of dark men ruled by a young white chief.”

Holland Publishing (1912) 72 pages.

By Hans Kurella.

A Modern Man of Science.. Translated from the German by M. Eden Paul. “Entirely new, however, is the attempt here made to demonstrate how high is the position of Lombroso’s brilliance may justly be said to have occupied in a epoch of positive study of the world, of mankind and society.”

New York, Reman Co. (1910) 199 pages.