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The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it explains the current records management practices for Canadian criminal records. Second, it details the larger social and cultural implications of those practices, toward considering the role records management plays in long‐term sustainable offender rehabilitation outcomes.

This paper is based on a thorough literature review, which considered research on the history of Canadian criminal record management; current records management procedures for Canadian criminal records; and current Canadian social and cultural understandings of offenders, criminal records, and the relationship between criminal record management and public policy.

This paper finds that Canadian records management procedures for criminal records can have grave impacts on offenders' lives. Specifically, this paper explores how records management practices are shaped by the social norms and values embedded in public policy mandates, which ultimately appear to disrupt, rather than support, offenders' rehabilitation.

This paper's research is limited by its current approach. Consequently, it encourages researchers to further develop its findings in the future, both domestic to Canada and internationally.

This paper includes implications that advocate for increased awareness about how public policy dictated records management procedures can limit offenders' ability to reintegrate into society.

This paper addresses the grave social consequences and burdens offenders face when they are unable to seal their previous criminal record.

This paper addresses the need to study how offenders' rehabilitation is affected by the policy dictating the management of their criminal record.

The purpose of this study is to explore spatiotemporal factors that affect the empirical analysis of whether crime rates in buffer areas surrounding abandoned properties transferred to a Land Bank that differed among three regimes: before transfer, during Land Bank stewardship and after disposition and whether those differences were associated with differences in relative crime activity in the neighborhoods in which they were located.

This study analyzed crime incidents occurring between 2010 and 2018 in 0.1-mile buffer areas surrounding 31 abandoned properties sold by the Land Bank and their neighborhoods in which those properties were located. Using Copulas, researchers compared concordance/discordance in the buffer areas across the three regime states for each property and approximately matched time periods for associated neighborhoods.

In a substantial number of cases, the relative crime activity levels for buffer areas surrounding individual sold properties as measured by the Copulas shifted from concordant to discordant states and vice versa. Similarly, relative crime activity levels for neighborhoods shifted from concordant to discordant states across three matched regimes. In some cases, the property and neighborhood states matched, while in other cases they diverged. These cross-level interactions indicate that criminal behavioral patterns and target selection change over time and relative criminal activity. The introduction of Copulas can improve the reliability of such models over time and when and where they should be customized to add more granular insights needed by law enforcement agencies.

The introduction of Copulas can improve the spatiotemporal reliability of the analysis of criminal activity over space and time.

Spatiotemporal considerations should be incorporated in setting interventions to manage criminal activity.

This study provides support for policies supporting renovation of abandoned properties.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this research is the first application of Copulas to crime impact studies. As noted, Copulas can help reduce the risk of applying intervention or enforcement programs that are no longer reliable or lack the precision provided by insights into convergent/divergent patterns of criminal activity.

Located within growing scholarly interest in linking the global financial crisis with revelations of financial crime, this piece utilises Roman Tomasic's suggestion that the financial crisis has marked something of a turning point in regulatory responses to financial crime worldwide. Tomasic attributes this to changing attitudes towards light-touch regulation and risk assessment, and the demand for existing agencies to be replaced with new tougher authorities. In the UK, this can be illustrated by the imminent replacement of the FSA with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Discussion of the FSA's financial crime fighting activity is an important forecast for the likely directional focus of the FCA in this regard. A focus only on “market abuse” enforcement within this arises on account of the effects for financial systems widely attributed to this activity, with threats to systemic stability being a hallmark of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This methodology also encourages coherence in focus and management of sources within the article. Market abuse enforcement provides a lens for exploring the FSA's adoption of the philosophy and ethos of “credible deterrence”, and FCA commitment to retain it, and ultimately for applying the hypothesis of the “haphazard pursuit of financial crime” to pre-crisis criminal enforcement relating to financial crime undertaken by the FSA.

The FSA and FCA appear acutely aware that the financial crisis has marked something of a turning point for the enforcement of financial crime, and for signalling changes in approach, for the reasons explored by Tomasic. Tomasic correctly identifies factors encouraging a range of undesirable practices pre-crisis, and ones signalling tougher and more sustained attention being paid to financial crime henceforth. It is noted that, pre-crisis, the FSA's pursuit of criminal enforcement of market abuse was conscious, comprehensively resourced, well publicised, and actually extensive.

This exploration of the FSA's criminal enforcement of market abuse given the Authority's own perceptions that it was not, and could never be, a “mainstream” criminal prosecutor considers the likely lasting legacy of this determined pursuit, when domestic politics and pan-European policies suggested against this. This is likely to be enormously valuable as the FCA undertakes this task in a domestic arena which is markedly in contrast from this, and where European agendas are pushing in favour of criminal enforcement, with the “more Europe, or less” debate providing a further dimension of interest.

The criminalization of online financial fraud is examined by analyzing the existing literature, policies and state statutes within the context of the cybercrime ecosystem. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate online fraud policies within the USA and the prevalence of such incidents to explore the effectiveness of current fraud policies.

This examination explores policies related to online fraud within the USA by defining online financial fraud incidents within the context of the cybercrime ecosystem and analyzing such incidents with routine activities theory to emphasize the current legislative inadequacies with provisional policy recommendations.

This research suggests online financial fraud is not unanimously conceptualized among regulating or criminal institutions. Although federal regulators have governed financial institutions, federal institutions have failed to account for the capabilities of computer-mediated and technological device use (12 USC §1829).

The limited research analyzing the effectiveness of guardianship that prevents or deters internet-mitigated or dependent financial fraud crimes.

Policy recommendations include but are not limited to mandating federal and privatized financial institutions to disclose all fraudulent activity to all stakeholders (e.g. customers and local and federal criminal justice agencies).

This paper provides an innovative approach using a criminological theory and policy framework to examine the prevalence of online fraud and the regulations enacted to counteract such violations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that affect how managers assess the importance of criminal history for job seekers with criminal records in Ban the Box states.

This study uses a phenomenological investigative approach to examine narrative interview data obtained from 18 human resource (HR) professionals in organizations in five Ban the Box states.

Contrary to previous research, the findings presented in this paper show that managers are inclined to hire applicants with a criminal history. However, study findings indicate that those hiring decisions are positively influenced by: perceived value of criminal history; concerns about safety and cost; characteristics of the offense; motivation to hire; and evidence of applicant growth. Furthermore, a lack of systematic evaluation processes among hiring managers may present a barrier to employment.

This paper explores a poorly understood area of the HR management and employment inclusion literatures – the identification of factors that influence evaluations of applicants with a criminal history.

It is fair to say that there is currently no consensus on the detailed approach to conducting a criminal financial investigation among Dutch public prosecutors, let alone among European public prosecutors as a whole. Nevertheless, since the late 1980s attention has been focused in the Netherlands on the financial aspects of serious forms of crime, at least in the legal and policy‐making process.

International policy approaches to cannabis production and use are changing rapidly, and within the Irish context, alternatives to prohibition are being considered. This study aims to explore policymaker’s attitudes towards the decriminalisation and legal regulation of cannabis for recreational use in the midst of an unfolding policy process, examining the degree which a “policy window” might be open for the implementation of cannabis policy change.

Semi-structured interviews were held with eight key informants within the policy field in Dublin, Ireland. Kingdon’s (2014) Multiple Streams framework was used to consider whether the problems, policy and political streams were aligning to support progressive policy change.

Irish policymakers indicated broad support for the decriminalisation of cannabis. The legal regulation of cannabis received more qualified support. Existing policy was heavily criticised with criminalisation identified as a clear failure. Of particular interest was the willingness of policymakers to offer opinions which contrasted with the policy positions of their organisations. While a policy window did open – and close – subsequent governmental commitments to examine the issue of drugs policy in a more deliberative process in the near future highlight the incremental nature of policy change.

This study provides unique insight into the opinions of policymakers in the midst of a prolonged period of policy evolution. A latent aspiration for historical policy change was situated within the realpolitik of more traditional approaches to policy development, demonstrating that the alignment of Kingdon’s (2014) problem, policy and political streams are essential for change in cannabis policy.

We use Canadian data to examine the help‐seeking strategies of women dealing with the consequences of violent victimization. Consideration of the help‐seeking strategies of victimsmay provide insight into other decision‐making processes. The analytic framework integrates research on police reporting and intimate partner violence with the wider help‐seeking literature. This integration allows for an examination of the effect of the victim’s relationship to her offender on decisions to seek help from family, friends, doctors, social service agencies and the police. The research has two objectives. First, we aim to determine whether help‐seeking exists as isolated choices or whether there is a discernable set of help‐seeking strategies used by crime victims. Although many victims do not call the police, they often rely on family, friends, social service and mental health interventions.We find that those victims who report their victimizations to the police also seek support from family and friends. Second, we examine the correlates of these help‐seeking decisions. In doing so, we explore the effects of the offender relationship on decisions to seek help. We explore differences in help‐seeking across attacks by strangers, spousal offenders, dating offenders, and other known offenders. Our findings suggest that women victimized by a spousal offender are more likely than others to use a substantial help‐seeking strategy that includes disclosure to the police, doctors and social service agencies.

This study examines the relationship of personality characteristics to drug treatment effectiveness for prison releasees. Prison releasees from two drug treatment programs (an out‐patient setting and a therapeutic community setting) are compared with each other and to releasees from a comparison group. Treatment success is measured 6 months after release from prison in terms of 1) abstinence of illicit drug use and 2) lack of recidivism. The data are analyzed using logistic regression with demographic, criminal history, past drug use, psychological, and treatment measures included in the equations. Findings suggest that several personality dimensions are related to treatment effectiveness, sometimes in unexpected ways. The findings also reveal that different personality characteristics are associated with each of the two measures of treatment success. The results are discussed in terms of policy implications for treatment programs.

This paper is designed to critically review and analyze the body of research on a popular gang reduction strategy, implemented widely in the United States and a number of other countries, to: (1) assess whether researchers designed their evaluations to align with the theorized causal mechanisms that bring about reductions in violence; and (2) discuss how evidence on gang programs is generated and consumed. That review and assessment is then used to frame a research agenda for studying gang interventions.

A case study design is used to generate a multi-faceted understanding of the possible avenues for evaluation research on the law enforcement-based strategy known as the Group Violence Intervention. The paper discusses questions that remain to be answered about the strategy, such as “what type of deterrence is operating?” and if the model actually works by the threat of deterrence, and not by removing high-risk offenders and shootings from the street, what activities are needed to maintain the effect?

Across roughly two dozen impact evaluations of GVI, none have examined the likely cause and effect components of this multi-partner strategy in reducing the violence. Furthermore, there are many issues related to the production and generation of criminal justice evaluation research that have adversely pushed the balance of evidence on what works in gang reduction toward law enforcement programming. However, there are many strategies that researchers can use to think broadly about appropriate and holistic research and evaluation on gangs and gang programming.

The recommendations for research, if implemented, can help build a body of knowledge to move toward community-based and restorative models of gang violence reduction.

This original piece is one of the first essays to contextualize and discuss how aspects of the production of social science research on gangs may directly impact what programs and strategies are implemented on the ground.