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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.

Sex offender registration and notification act (SORNA) offenders are a source of scholarly study across the social, behavioral, forensic and legal sciences with the bulk of literature focusing on the legal standing and deterrent value of sexual offender registries. Less research focuses on the offending careers of current SORNA offenders relative to other types of sexual offenders whose current offense is not SORNA. The purpose of the current study is to examine this issue empirically.

Using cross-sectional data from a census of male federal offenders who ever perpetrated a sexual offense from the central USA between 2016 and 2020, the current study used t-tests, logistic regression and negative binomial regression to compare current SORNA offenders to other federal correctional clients in terms of their lifetime offending history, sexual violence and compliance on federal supervision.

Current SORNA offenders are significantly more severe and versatile in their sexual offending, have more extensive criminal careers and criminal justice system involvement, and exhibit significantly increased odds of revocation on supervised release despite controls for age, race and ethnicity. However, sensitivity models that specified the federal Post-Conviction Risk Assessment reduced the effects of SORNA status to non-significance in all models.

SORNA offenders are potentially a significant offender group with evidence of both and given their versatile and specialized lifetime offending and noncompliance on federal supervision. However, current SORNA status is rendered spurious once a risk assessment is controlled suggesting more research is needed to evaluate whether sex offender registries posit greater crime control benefit.

Is the death penalty dying? This autobiographical essay offers observations on the application of capital punishment in three very different legal jurisdictions at three different time periods when – partially by happenstance and partially by design – she was a homicide researcher, a participant and an observer of profound changes in the jurisdiction's application of the death penalty.

In this chapter, we explicate the evolution of Canadian corrections, the political, social and judicial realities that have shaped punishment and imprisonment over history. We reveal how such factors continue to leave their mark on the current Canadian federal criminal justice system and its structures of incarceration.

A comprehensive review of accessible literatures detailing the nation’s development of punishment and incarceration is presented. The history of imprisonment is traced up to the current year and the role of penal populism as theorized by Garland (2001) and, later, Pratt (2007) is presented to discern the motivations for the current punitive correctional rhetoric, as well as its impact on conditions of confinement and program implementation in penitentiaries.

Canada’s correctional history is largely shaped by how punishment is defined and how such definitions are influenced by members of society; including victims, perpetrators, politicians and media personalities. The realities of current conditions of confinement have been impacted by social and political pressures that encourage increasingly punitive policies oriented towards ‘tough on crime’ initiatives. Current corrections are characterized by overcrowding, concerns about rehabilitative programming and resource allocation and mental health care.

Recent legislative amendments have solidified a ‘tough on crime’ agenda in Canada, however the process underlying the movement towards the acceptance, even public demand, for such legislative changes remain in need of dissemination; particularly in light of the decades of decreasing crime rates in the country.

In this chapter, we provide a brief historical framework of the events and policy changes that impacted the prosecution of terrorism over the past 50 years with emphasis placed on the changes that resulted from the 9/11 attacks.

We provide a review of relevant literature and complete the chapter by providing new data (2015) on case outcomes derived from the American Terrorism Study, a database housed in the Terrorism Research Center in Fulbright College, at the University of Arkansas.

Investigative and prosecutorial authority in U.S. terrorism cases has experienced ebbs and flows that correspond with terrorism attacks as well as missteps by the FBI, and each has impacted the success of prosecution efforts. Despite dramatic changes, the number of cases prosecuted after 9/11 is unprecedented, and conviction rates continue to climb.

This chapter provides the reader with a synopsis of the policy changes that have occurred in federal terrorism investigations and trials from the late 1960s upto the present. Based on that context, we provide an explanation of how those policy changes have impacted terrorism prosecutions.

In today's global economy, the public routinely engages in international financial transactions via the internet. This has created opportunities for online fraud. The paper aims to explain what policymakers who are serious about providing crime victims with an effective restitution remedy can learn from the US Government's experience with forfeiture.

The paper, by an Assistant US Attorrney, combines narrative with argument and analysis.

Existing restitution law is ineffective. Prosecutors have used forfeiture laws as an indirect mean of providing compensation for crime victims, but forfeiture law has its limits. The better approach would be for Congress to authorize the pretrial seizure and restraint of assets directly for restitution, utilizing standards comparable to those that exist in current forfeiture law. To address situations where a defendant places money overseas to avoid restitution, Congress should enact international restitution laws comparable to those that exist in forfeiture to facilitate the recovery of those assets. Without these kinds of reforms, the government will continue to struggle to collect restitution.

The paper provides information of value to all involved with international financial transactions and law enforcement activities.

The purpose of this study was to describe programs that aim at programs to divert people with a mental condition from the criminal justice system to mental health services are being initiated, but reporting is limited and fragmented. This study described programs that aim at diverting persons with mental health conditions out of criminal justice systems to community mental health services, with the intention to inform research and practice.

A scoping review was used to map and synthesise diversion programs. Ten online data bases were searched. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews was used to direct the selection of sources. Research and evaluation publications and grey literature published from 2010 to 2021 in English language were included.

Eight distinct diversion programs were identified across 24 countries or territories covering five phases of the criminal justice process. Diversion programs included crisis intervention teams, the electronic linkage system, mobile crisis units, the criminal justice liaison program, problem-solving courts, the abstinence-based program, the community equivalence program and the forensic assertive community treatment program. Although distinct programs have the potential to form a system of diversion across the continuum of the criminal justice process, only two territories moved in that direction. Diversion programs reported overwhelmingly originated from high-income countries.

Stigma that labels people with mental health conditions as violent and dangerous need to be addressed. It is important to place diversion systems on national policy agendas and advocate for evidence-based interventions.

The study provides a blueprint on diversion systems to set a research agenda and develop a road map, tailored towards local contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dark figure of crime among federal sex offenders from the USA to quantify crime victims and sex crime events among those with no official criminal record.

Using data on 119 offenders selected from a five-year census of sex offenders selected from a federal probation jurisdiction in the Midwestern United States, descriptive, partial correlations, and ROC-AUC models were conducted.

In total, 69 percent of offenders self-reported a contact sexual offense during polygraph examination. In total, 34 offenders had zero official record of sexual abuse but non-zero self-reported history of sexual abuse. These 34 clients offended against 148 victims that potentially denoted a minimum number of 148 sex crime events, a median number of 1,480 sex crime events, a mean number of 32,101 sex crime events, and a maximum number of 827,552 sex crime events. Total paraphilias were not predictive of self-reported sexual offending but were strongly associated with prolific self-reported sexual offending.

The dark figure of sexual offending is enormous and the revelation of this information is facilitated by polygraph examination of federal sex offenders. Ostensibly non-contact sex offenders such as those convicted of possession of child pornography are very likely to have a history of contact sexual offending. Consistent with the containment model, polygraph examinations of the sexual history of offenders convicted of sexual offenses should be required to facilitate public safety.

The purpose of this paper is to provide enhanced insights on corporate governance failures which contributed to various financial crimes in major banking institutions and whether those involved have been held sufficiently accountable in the USA and the UK.

This interdisciplinary doctrinal research relies on primary and secondary data and is complemented by the case study approach.

Case insights demonstrate that a few major banks and isolated numbers of bankers at the lower echelons were held accountable in the USA but to a lesser degree in the UK. This contrasts sharply with the earlier Enron-type corporate financial reporting scandals or the much earlier Savings and Loans Crisis; but recent criminal charge practices against mega banks suggest a policy shift.

The paper findings suggest the need for further research in this under-researched area, while the banking communities in the USA and the UK may be prompted to review their corporate governance practices.

This interdisciplinary research uses corporate law and criminological research to provide enhanced insights on financial crimes perpetuated in major banks in the USA and the UK.

Since, at least 9/11 financial institutions and financial intermediaries are considered to be at the forefront in the international attempt to halt illicit money transfer. Most financial institutions if involved at all play an unknowing or lax, but major role in dictating money laundering schemes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that to avoid sanctions including criminal liability, financial institutions and financial intermediaries must be better prepared and willing to assess prototypical money laundering typologies. To do otherwise will invite civil and criminal liability.

This paper examines legislative pronouncements in general and US caselaw in particular in order to assess compliance and liability: real or imagined.

There appears to be considerable agreement concerning at least one goal of terrorists attacks and that is to disrupt directly and indirectly economic global stability. Further, those charged with the task of identifying terrorist assets in a financial system and developing a profile of terrorist financial transactions has, at least according to unclassified documents, proved to be futile. Closer international investigation and co‐operation appears to be more a slogan than a reality.

Reviews examples of blatant illegal acts of money laundering within the banking community and examines the exploding real estate market and its transmigration into the world of laundering illicit money.