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Women across the world are being incarcerated at an alarming rate. Between 2000 and 2017, the female incarceration rate worldwide increased by 53.3%, whereas the male incarceration rate increased by only 19.6%. In Latin America, drug offences are the first or second cause of female incarceration. The excessive use of pre-trial detention, mandatory minimum sentences, and disproportionate penalties characterise the region’s drug policies. Recent data compiled by the Washington Office on Latin America show that between 35% and 70% of incarcerated women, depending on the country, are behind bars due to a drug offence, while for men the rate is much lower. In other words, harsh drug laws disproportionately impact women.

Qualitative research on female prisoners accused of drug-related offences shows how gender roles, gender-based violence and social exclusion are often triggering factors for women’s participation in the drug trade. Agency and victimisation co-exist in these women’s stories, and while drug trafficking becomes a means to cope with adversity, it also further enhances previous vulnerabilities, and incarceration can have a devastating impact on their families. These women are engaged in high-risk activities but represent a low risk to society. Drug law reforms and the use of alternatives to incarceration could reduce the number of women behind bars for low-level drug offences.

The intersection between drug control and the death penalty represents a key nexus for human rights and drug reform advocacy and constitutes one of the most visible examples of the link between abusive law enforcement and drug control in the current period. The issue has emerged as a flashpoint of international debates on drugs and is one that raises important questions and challenges for both ‘abolitionist’ countries that oppose the death penalty and ‘retentionist’ States that continue to execute people. The death penalty for drug offences cannot be dismissed as simply an internal matter for States. Not only do executions for drug offences violate significant international human rights legal protections, domestic capital punishment laws in many cases cannot be separated from the influence of the international drug control treaty regime. This chapter will explore the question of the death penalty for drug offences and the challenges it presents for the international drug control regime more broadly.¹

This paper assesses the significance and impact of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 and the Money Laundering Regulations in the context of previous legislation and examines the extent to which the law has been strengthened by the new legislation. It also highlights the major international initiatives which have been responsible for exposing the extent of the money‐laundering phenomenon and which have helped shape the present legislative framework. The banking and financial system is finding itself in the front line of the war being waged internationally against money launderers. Traditional concepts of banking secrecy are being undermined as governments struggle to preserve the integrity of the banking system. The war is on a vast scale. The Financial Action Task Force (created in 1989 by the seven major industrial nations and the President of the European Commission) estimated that the amount of money being laundered through the financial system was US$85bn per year. The extent of the problem was recognised in the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 1993 which found that eight of the world's major money‐Iaundering states are located in Europe. Europe has responded to the growing crisis in the financial sector with the Money Laundering Directive which was due to be fully implemented across the Community by 1st January, 1993. The directive, which applies to credit institutions and financial institutions, including Community‐based branches of non‐Community institutions, reflects a number of key international initiatives and attempts to harmonise the anti‐laundering legislation of the Member States, though with varied success. This paper outlines the directive and its antecedents, before tracing the considerable developments within the UK since the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986, which marked the beginning of the Government's campaign to deprive criminals of the fruits of their crime, culminating in the Criminal Justice Act 1993 (CJA 1993). The secondary legislation is also analysed, in the form of the Money Laundering Regulations (the ‘Regulations’), which came into effect on 1st April, 1994. The CJA 1993 introduces and defines the ambit of the new money‐laundering offences, whilst the Regulations clarify the procedures which must be adopted by anyone carrying on ‘relevant financial business’. For the sake of brevity the focus has been only on the position in England and Wales, since Scotland and Northern Ireland are governed by different statutes.

This comparison has been prepared in an effort to assist practitioners when confronted with the main confiscation provisions of legislation as it applies to crime and also to drug trafficking.

After six years, the money‐laundering law, under the Drug Trafficking (Confiscation of Benefits) Act 1992 (DTA), is now changed. The DTA (which came into operation on 30th November, 1993) has been criticised by some for its limited scope in criminalising only drug‐related money‐laundering activities. Others perceived the lack of powers to extradite money‐laundering offenders as another shortcoming. This is no longer the case today in Singapore. This paper highlights some of the changes recently introduced under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (SCA) which was passed on 6th July, 1999 and came into operation on 13th September, 1999 (‘commencement date’). To be sure, the SCA is not new legislation; it is merely an amendment to the DTA. One of the amendments was the renaming of the DTA to reflect the criminalisation of corruption and other serious crimes as money‐laundering offences. Hence, the law governing money laundering is no longer called the DTA but the SCA.

The Drug Offences (Forfeiture of Proceeds) Act (the Act) was passed in 1994 by the Jamaican Parliament in fulfilment of its obligations under the 1988 Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. The purpose of the Act is to enable the state to forfeit the proceeds, instrumentalities used to commit as well as any benefit derived from the commission of drug trafficking offences. Under the Act drug traffickers can be deprived of their criminally acquired property and also any property used in the commission of drug trafficking offences can be forfeited even if the property does not belong to the convicted person.

This paper aims to examine sentencing decisions for drug-trafficking offences in the criminal courts of the city of Recife to address a gap in quantitative research on drug sentencing and incarceration in Brazil.

Using original data obtained from the Court of Justice for Pernambuco, the research used multivariate regression analysis to investigate the effect of case processing, offender, and offence characteristics on sentence length.

A key finding of the research is the influence of two legal factors on sentence length: admitting to a drug-trafficking offence and being categorized as “mitigated trafficking”. Results also indicate that first-time defendants were more likely to be categorized as mitigated trafficking, stressing the importance of criminal history on predicting sentencing outcomes. “Mitigated trafficking” is a distinct category of drug-trafficking created by the Drug Law nº. 11.343 (2006) to protect defendants considered novices in the illicit drug market from receiving longer imprisonment sentences.

The findings suggest that the policy strategy of having a legal distinction for a specific type of defendant appears to be effective in impacting sentence length for drug-trafficking convictions. Future research could explore how similar strategies could be adopted to influence sentencing for other vulnerable groups. However, focussing on a defendant records or prior convictions as an eligibility criterion could disproportionately impact defendants who are caught in a cycle of re-offending for socio-economic reasons or a need to finance a substance use disorder.

This research address a gap in quantitative sentencing research in Brazil and contributes to the broader literature by presenting results that are aligned with previous studies conducted in North America.

To examine the criminal laws and regulations on money laundering control in China and Hong Kong and to call for legal and institutional reforms in China.

This paper provides a comparative analysis and critically reviews the laws and regulations on money laundering control in China and Hong Kong.

China has shown a firm determination to combat money laundering since 2002. Reforms on Article 191 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (1997) and the institutional framework are called for to comply with the international standards of the FATF recommendations, the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) and the UN Convention against Corruption (2003) to control money laundering.

This paper highlights the problems and proposes both legal and institutional reforms on money laundering control in China.

This paper initiates the analytical research on the legal and institutional problems of money laundering control in China which had not been adequately explored.

This paper aims to focus on the concept of money laundering and explores the evolution and expansion of criminalization of predicate offences to the money laundering within the international anti-money laundering (AML) regime over the time. It proposes how to limit the size and scope of predicate offences in designing a balanced legal definition.

This paper opted a content analysis focussed on the criminalization aspect of offences to money laundering in the international AML regime under the United Nations Conventions (Vienna, Palermo and Corruption Convention) and Financial Action Task Force Standards.

This paper provides how the criminalization of money laundering has evolved and its definition expanded over the time. The international definition is widely drafted with wide range of predicate offences from proceeds of drug money to corruption, including terrorist financing and terrorist acts; however, the two phenomena – money laundering and terrorist financing are quiet distinct apart. This continual expansion of predicate offences quite leads legality issues such as over-criminalization and conflict with principles of criminal law. This paper suggests an approach to limit the size and scope of predicate offences to money laundering.

This paper includes implications for the development of a balanced approach in defining predicate offences through a qualitative limitation approach consistent with the minimalist theory of penalization of criminal law.

This paper attains an identified issue how the legal definition of the money laundering offence can be improved while considering rule of law and principles of criminal law concerns.

The acquisition of and control over wealth is the motivation for most serious crimes involving premeditation. This is all the more so when the criminal activity resembles an enterprise which inevitably requires capital to operate and lubricate its aspirations. Money, or rather wealth, in its disposable form, is therefore not only the goal of criminal enterprises but the life blood of the enterprise. Therefore until the profits of crime are taken away from subversive and criminal factions, there is little chance of effectively discouraging criminal and abusive conduct which produces great wealth or, through its profits, allows power and prestige to be acquired. As soon as the state devises methods for the tracing and seizure of such funds, there is an obvious and compelling incentive for the criminal to hide the source of his ill‐gotten gains — in other words to engage in money laundering.