Dr. iur. Aleksandr Khechumyan

Law

External Junior Fellow (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow)
November 2022 – March 2024

Last Update: 08.11.2024

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Aleksandr Khechumyan is Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Feodor Lynen post-doctoral fellow. Aleksandr will be spending the returning phase of his fellowship from 01.11.2022 to 31.10.2023 at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, where he will be researching the issues of equal impact of punishment on elderly and ill prisoners. From 01.08.2020 to 31.10.2022 in the framework of the same fellowship Aleksandr conducted research at the Department of Legal Studies of Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.

From 01.03.2017 to 31.07.2020 Aleksandr first was a post-doctoral fellow and then a guest-researcher at Max Plank Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany, conducting research on the topic of Police Integrity among others.

Aleksandr holds an LL.M. degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex, UK, and Dr.iur. degree from the University of Freiburg, Germany. He has extensive practical experience working at both governmental and non-governmental sectors and has published articles in such journals as European Human Rights Law Review; European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research; Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management; International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. His book Imprisonment of Elderly and Death in Custody was published by Rutledge in 2017.

Selected Publications

Khechumyan, A., Imprisonment of the Elderly and Death in Custody: The Right to Review, Routledge, London, and New York, 2018
Khechumyan, A. & Kutnjak Ivkovich, S. Exploring Differences in Police Integrity within a Centralized Police System. In: Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich & M.R. Haberfeld (eds.) 2019. Exploring Police Integrity: Novel Approaches to Police Integrity Theory and Methodology, Springer.
Khechumyan, A. Continued Imprisonment of Terminally Ill Prisoners in the United States: An International Human Rights Perspective. In: Deflem, Mathieu, editor (2014). Punishment and Incarceration: A Global Perspective (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance Volume 19) Bingley, UK: Emerald.
Khechumyan, A. & E. Dewhurst (2015). The Scope of Initial Pre-Trial Detention under the European Convention on Human Rights: An Armenian Case Study. In: European Human Rights Law Review, Iss: 2 (pp. 174-184).
Khechumyan, A. & S. Margaryan (2015). The Practice of Pre-Trial Detention in Armenia: An Examination of the Role of the Soviet Legacy. In: European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, Vol. 21 Iss: 1 (pp. 117-134).

FRIAS Project

Old Age, Severe Illness, and the Equal Impact of Punishment in Europe

The measurement of punishments’ severity is an issue of utmost importance, because to achieve the same aims different type and quantity of punishment would be required depending on a case at hand. It has been demonstrated that both custodial and non-custodial sanctions are routinely accompanied by the experience of suffering. Three main theoretical approaches to measurement of punishment severity are objectivism, subjectivism, and a hybrid approach. Irrespective of their differences in measuring the pains of punishment, all these approaches accept that in most extreme cases, such as very old age and severe illness, the impact of punishment based on individual experience of a particular individual should be acknowledged and the sanction should be adjusted to avoid an extreme unequal impact on particular individual. The main aim of this study is to critically assess the law and practices of sentences adjustment instruments designed to alleviate the unequal impact of imprisonment on elderly and/or seriously ill.