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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which contemporary organisations are imposing their own private sanctions on fraudsters.

The research draws on primary data from interviews with counter fraud practitioners in the UK, secondary sources and case examples.

Such developments have been stimulated, at least in part, by the broader limitations of the criminal justice system and in particular a “fraud bottleneck”. Alongside criminal sanctions, many examples are provided of organisations employing private prosecutions innovative forms of civil sanction and “pseudo state” sanctions, most commonly civil penalties comparable to fines.

Such changes could mark the beginning of the “rebirth of private prosecution” and the further expansion of private punishment. Growing private involvement in state sanctions and the development of private sanctions represents a risk to traditional guarantees of justice. There are differences in which comparable frauds are dealt with by corporate bodies and thus considerable inconsistency in sanctions imposed. In contrast with criminal justice measures, there is no rehabilitative element to private sanctions. More research is needed to assess the extent of such measures, and establish what is happening, the wider social implications, and whether greater state regulation is needed.

Private sanctions for fraud are likely to continue to grow, as organisations pursue their own measures rather than relying on increasingly over-stretched criminal justice systems. Their emergence, extent and implications are not fully understood by researchers and therefore need much more research, consideration and debate. These private measures need to be more actively recognised by criminal justice policy-makers and analysts alongside the already substantial formal involvement of the private sector in punishment through prisons, electronic tagging and probation, for example. Such measures lack the checks and balances, and greater degree of consistency as laid out in sentencing guidelines, of the criminal justice system. In light of this, consideration needs to be given to greater state regulation of private sanctions for fraud. More also needs to be done to help fraudsters suffering problems such as debt or addiction to rebuild their lives. There is a strong case for measures beyond the criminal justice system to support such fraudsters to be created and publicly promoted.

The findings are of relevance to criminal justice policy-makers, academics and counter fraud practitioners in the public and private sectors.

The primary goal of the Restorative Justice process is not punishment but making good the harm done by offending for the victim, the community and the offender. Offenders have to take responsibility for their actions as a precondition to addressing the harm that they have caused. Offenders become aware that a crime is committed, not against an abstraction, but against someone real, a person like themselves and against their community, who are directly and indirectly affected by what has happened. Crime and conflict affect relationships between individuals who are left outside the court system altogether by conventional justice. Proceedings and arguments of the restorative process are voluntary for all parties. People are given the opportunity to partake in mediation, or to accept reparation. The process is always confidential however; outcomes and agreements can be made public, depending on the authorisation by participants.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension between government protestations that youth justice policy is evidence-led and what the evidence implies in the context of the age of criminal responsibility.

The paper takes the form of a conceptual analysis of government policy and the evidence base.

The paper concludes that the current low age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales can be understood as a manifestation of the influence of underclass theory on successive governments.

The paper is not based on primary research.

The arguments adduced help to explain the reluctance of government to countenance any increase in the age of criminal responsibility.

The analysis might help inform approaches adopted by youth justice policy makers, practitioners and academics with an interest in seeking a rise in the age of criminal responsibility.

The paper offers an original analysis of government intransigence on an important social issue.

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of some of the deficiencies in the criminal justice system in Jamaica, particularly relating to financial crime. The author also examines possible alternatives in the approach that may be taken in tackling financial crime.

The methodology used was a review of data on financial crime in Jamaica as well as recent significant cases. An analysis of key pieces of legislation was also undertaken. In some instances, a comparative approach was invoked, with special reference to the UK and US laws.

Some essential findings include the positive impact that may be gained from restorative justice principles, the effective enforcement of asset recovery provisions and stricter regulation of the financial services industry.

There is no similar comprehensive examination of these issues concerning Jamaica.

Collateral consequences (CCs) of criminal convictions such as disenfranchisement, occupational restrictions, exclusions from public housing, and loss of welfare benefits represent one of the salient yet hidden features of the contemporary American penal state. This chapter explores, from a comparative and historical perspective, the rise of the many indirect “regulatory” sanctions flowing from a conviction and discusses some of the unique challenges they pose for legal and policy reform. US jurisprudence and policies are contrasted with the more stringent approach adopted by European legal systems and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in safeguarding the often blurred line between criminal punishments and formally civil sanctions. The aim of this chapter is twofold: (1) to contribute to a better understanding of the overreliance of the US criminal justice systems on CCs as a device of social exclusion and control, and (2) to put forward constructive and viable reform proposals aimed at reinventing the role and operation of collateral restrictions flowing from criminal convictions.

Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors and, in particular, prosecutors, use the legal tools associated with overcriminalization is scarce. In this chapter, we describe three forms of overcriminalization that, in theory, have created new tools for prosecutors: the criminalization of new behaviors, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, and the internal expansion of criminal laws. We then use a unique dataset of felony filings and dispositions in Florida from 1995 to 2015 to test a series of hypotheses examining how overcriminalization influences prosecutorial practices given three changes to the political economy during this time: the decline in violent and property crime, the Great Recession, and a growing call for criminal justice reform. We find that prosecutors have been unconstrained by declining crime rates. Yet, rather than rely on new criminal statutes or mandatory minimum sentence laws, they maintained their caseloads by increasing their filing rates for traditional violent, property and drug offenses. At the same time, the data demonstrate nonviolent other offenses are the top charge in almost 20% of the felony caseload between 2005 and 2015. Our findings also suggest that, despite reform rhetoric, filing and conviction rates decreased due to the Recession, not changes in the law. We discuss the implications of these findings for criminal justice reform.

Although the family plays a key role in affecting offender behavior, little research examines how sanctioning contexts affect familial relationships. Using data from the Australian reintegrative shaming experiments (RISE), we investigate how the processing of offenders via court and conference affects their bonds with family members by examining the type of shaming – reintegrative or disintegrative – they experience. In contrast to disintegrative or stigmatizing shaming, which tends to be associated with court processing, reintegrative shaming shames the act and not the moral character of the offender, allowing for the reparation of social ties. We find that despite higher levels of stigmatization in conferences, this form of processing is also more reintegrative and strengthens family relationships to a greater extent than courts, with offenders feeling prouder of being a member of their family and indicating that familial closeness and respect increased. Moreover, reintegrative but not disintegrative shaming mediates the relationship between criminal justice processing and family relationships.

In December 2010, the Ministry of Justice published its criminal justice reform green paper, Breaking the Cycle: Effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders, which sets out the government's ambition for all criminal justice services to be delivered according to payment by results principles by 2015. This article describes the proposals contained in the green paper to implement a process of payment by results across the criminal justice system, examines some existing examples of payment by results‐based projects, and discusses some of the key questions that need to be resolved in the development of this new approach.

This chapter examines the delicate balance achieved by apex courts in new democracies when dealing with impunity for rights violations during times of transitional justice. While international law has clearly rejected amnesties for past rights violations, domestic politics sometimes incorporate amnesties as part of larger peace settlements. This puts courts in the difficult situation of balancing the competing demands of law and politics. Courts have achieved equipoise in this situation by adopting substantive interpretations and procedural approaches that use international law’s rights-based language but without implementing international law’s restrictions on amnesties. In many cases, courts do this without acknowledging the necessarily pragmatic nature of their decisions. In fact, oftentimes courts find ways of avoiding having to make any substantive decision, effectively removing themselves from a dispute that could call into question their adherence to international legal norms that transcend politics. In doing so, they empower political actors to continue down the road toward negotiated peace settlements, while at the same time protecting the courts’ legitimacy as institutions uniquely situated to protect international human rights norms – including those they have effectively deemphasized in the process.