Ascent of the corporate model in environmental-organized crime

Since the mid-1980s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 (RICO) has been used against traditional organized criminals (i.e., Mafia) operating within various waste-trade industries. Recent civil and criminal RICO cases brought in New York City and State, provide current examples of the overall limited success of using RICO against criminal actors situated within the waste-trade industries. Although the traditional form of organized crime (i.e., Mafia) appears to be on the wane, corporate forms of organized crime have already entered into the waste-trade industries to fill the void created by the extraction of their predecessors. These corporate racketeers closely mimic the old traditional form of crime they have replaced, but may prove to be even more intractable, because, as the literature on corporate crime has clearly shown, corporate entities are extremely resistant to labeling as illegitimate organizations. One result of addressing “environmental-organized crime” as strictly organized crime, rather than as environmental crime, is that little change will be forthcoming in our current environmental regulations, laws, strategies and policies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The legislative recreation of RICO: Reinforcing the ``myth' of organized crime

This paper uses historical content analysis to examine the implementation ofthe Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). It is argued thatthe historical events leading to the definition of organized crime as an alienconspiracy still affect RICO's use some 30 years after its passage. This paper applies state-centered theory to the theoretical frameworks of sociology of knowledge and innovation diffusion. This approach is used to relate the current implementation and controversy of RICO to the alien conspiracy view. Thought of in this context, legal implementation is the result of a knowledge creation and diffusion process. This paper demonstrates how one knowledge diffusionprocess (the acceptance of organized crime as a national conspiracy in 1970) leads to a new knowledge diffusion process (the use of RICO).     

The creation of RICO: Law as a knowledge diffusion process

This paper uses historical content analysis to examine the developmentof the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). It is argued that certain historical events led to the definition of organized crime as an alien conspiracy and helped shape the RICO law. The theoreticalframeworks of sociology of knowledge and innovation diffusion are used to relate the development of RICO to the alien conspiracy view. Thoughtof in this context, law is the result of a knowledge creation and diffusion process. This paper demonstrates how one knowledge diffusion process (the acceptance of organized crime as a national conspiracy)affected a new knowledge creation process culminating in the RICO law.     

Scrutinizing RICO

Past studies on the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (criminal RICO) are merged with research on organized crime and recently collected information on the presence of informants in appellate cases. After identifying problems associated with the statute since its enactment in 1970, attention is directed toward the place of informants within court proceedings applying criminal RICO. The central finding points to a relatively high presence of informants in such cases. The explanation that follows accounts for the prevalence of informants in RICO cases by combining: (1) the statutes liberal construction, (2) an increasing acceptance amongst government and law-enforcement officials that the use of informants is essential to the fight against the apparent organized crime threat, and (3) the rationalization that extends from the prosecutorial success that has been documented within the United States and in other countries that have adopted similar forms of legislation.We would like to thank Pierre Tremblay and Marie-Andrée Bertrand for their comments and suggestions on past versions of this paper. We also show our gratitude to Gerard Lynch for his help during early phases of this research.     

Fraud,Free Speech and Fossil Fuel: Lessons from Big Tobacco for Big Oil

Recent journalistic investigations revealed that ExxonMobil carried out research beginning in the 1970s indicating fossil fuel's dangerous role in global warming. Rather than heed the warnings of its research, for the next few decades, ExxonMobil instead chose to become a leader in climate change denial; stressing uncertainty, propagating misinformation, funding denial, and politicizing and undermining the expert scientific consensus. Exxon's behavior invoked the tactics used by the tobacco industry years earlier, tactics which wound up the subject of a successful federal government lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The parallels with the tobacco industry prompted legislators and environmentalists to call on the Department of Justice to use RICO again to hold the fossil fuel industry to account. This article will consider the legal issues associated with bringing such an action, and whether useful lessons can be drawn from the tobacco litigation.     

试论有组织犯罪特别程序

有组织犯罪已经成为危害我国社会治安的日趋严重的问题,现行的刑事诉讼程序也面临着有组织犯罪的严峻挑战.基于有组织犯罪之特殊性,有必要以我国政府已经签署的《联合国打击跨国有组织犯罪公约》为准绳,建立我国有组织犯罪特别程序.     

The political-criminal nexus in the united states

Summary The 1967 Task Force Report on Organized Crime (TFR) found that “...all available data indicate that organized crime flourishes only where it has corrupted public officials.” 48 From that standpoint, neutralizing local law enforcement would appear to be central to criminal operations. That conclusion would depend on (a) how one defines “organized crime” and (b) the assumption that organized crime described by the Task Force covers all cases and species of it including what is referred to as “non-traditional” organized crime. A conclusion that seems unchallengeable in the Report is the observation that it was impossible to determine “the extent of the corruption of public officials in the United States.” The lack of information on this question was aggravated by the fact that many of those who provided information to the Task Force were themselves public officials.     

Discussion: wrestling with the beast

Criminology is but one of what Abbott refers to as “sociologies archipelago of particular subject matters.” I discuss the papers in this issue of Crime, Law and Social Change as “fractals” of disciplines that contribute to knowledge in criminology.     

Hate Crime and the Privatization of Political Responsibility: Protecting Queer Citizens in the United States?

My purpose in this article is to address issues that arise with the emergence of “hate crime” law as a response to violence against historically subordinated groups, with particular reference to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered (henceforth “GLBT”), and otherwise queer citizens. The specific jurisdictional context of my reflection is the USA but the issues I raise have significance beyond that context. Increasingly in recent years hate crime legislation has been adopted or proposed in the US as well as other jurisdictions as a response to bigotry and violence directed against minority groups in multi-cultural societies. In 2006 in the UK, proposals to outlaw “incitement to religious hatred” were hotly debated. In 2008 demands are being made to extend the ‘incitement laws’ to include incitement to homophobic hatred. In 2007 in the US the Senate and House of Representatives in Washington DC passed an Act, which some described as the Matthew Shepard Act, to promote and enhance the use of the criminal law against perpetrators of crimes motivated by hatred based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. Ultimately the Act failed to become law. The debates in the UK and US provide the backdrop against which I want to examine the arguments for and against hate crime legislation, both generally and with specific application to queer citizens. This require us to think again about the relation of queer citizens to the state, the reach of political equality and human rights, and the aims and limits of the criminal law and system of “criminal justice”.

罪刑法定视域中的刑法适用解释

The judicial interpretation of criminal law should be an application interpretation to individual cases that is guided by judges and participated by the prosecutor and the accused, for which the judicial judgment should be combined with the application of criminal law of specific cases, and the criminal precedents should be as a carrier. The Supreme People’s Court should change from the previous practices of issuing normative and abstract interpretation to the dual approaches of the interpretation of criminal law application through direct creation and indirect acknowledgement. Liang Genlin, Professor and Vice Dean of Law School of Peking University and as a visiting professor of University of Tuebingen (2001–2002). His main research focuses on criminal law and criminal policy, and his important publications include “On the Structure of Punishment”, “Liang Genlin’s Review on Criminal Policy, Volume I, Criminal Policy: Standpoint and Category”, “Liang Genlin’s Review on Criminal Policy, Volume II, the Arm of the Law: Expand and Limit”, “Liang Genlin’s Review on Criminal Policy, Volume III, Criminal Sanction: Manner and Choice”. Besides, he has also published over 40 discourses on criminal law and criminal policy since 1996.     

利用ATM故障恶意取款案的法律性质辨析

Malicious withdrawal from ATM constitutes offence of theft and belongs to “theft from financial institutions”. In case of “extremely huge amount”, according to China’s Criminal Law, the minimum statutory penalty for the accused is life imprisonment, which is undoubtedly too severe. So far as judiciaries are concerned, reflection should be made with respect to the relevant legislative provisions. In handling individual cases, the wisest practice for judiciaries is to refer to the provision of clause 2 of article 63 of the Criminal Law, hence submitting them to the examination and approval by the Supreme Court for mitigation of penalties. Fu liqing, Ph.D graduate of Peking University (major in the science of criminal law), is now a lecturer at Law School of Renmin University of China. He once learned at Law School of Tokyo University of Japan (2004.10∼2006.9). His representative works are Make-up of the Rule of Law, Voice of the Rule of Law, Theory of the Subjective Illegal Elements—Evolving with the center of intention crime. Meanwhile, he has about 40 articles published in academic journals. His recent research is in the field of theoretic re-construction of the constitutive crime elements and the application of interpretation method on criminal law, etc.     

Intention and Attempt

Anglo-American criminal law traditionally demands a criminal purpose for an attempt conviction, even when the crime attempted requires only foresight or recklessness. Some legal philosophers have defended this rule by appeal to an alleged difference in the “moral character” or “intentional structure” of intended versus non-intended harms. I argue that there are reasons to be skeptical of any such differences; and that even if conceded, it is only on the basis of an unworkable view of criminal responsibility that such a distinction would support a rule restricting attempts to criminal purpose. I defend instead the “continuity thesis,” according to which attempts are functionally continuous with endangerment offenses: both are legal efforts to regulate unreasonably dangerous conduct. The upshot of the continuity thesis is that there is little substantive difference between attempt and endangerment in principle, no matter how they are labeled in law.     

Nigeria

Conclusion Organized crime activities flourish in Nigeria because law enforcement is weak or nonexistent at all levels. The police were corrupt even before organized crime emerged in its present form in Nigeria. Since “corruption is necessary for the successful operation of organized crime,”⁹⁴ the structure and operation of the Nigerian police, together with the activities of corrupt heads of state and corrupt politicians, made Nigeria fertile ground for organized crime. When those who make the laws and those who enforce the law are shamelessly corrupt, then the entire society is cor-rupted. These leaders are supposed to be the role models of the younger generations in Nigeria. Instead, they represent what Gresham Sykes and David Matza have termed the “appeal to higher loyalty”—a technique for rationalization of wrongs by under-privileged elements of Nigerian society who willingly engage in criminal activity.     

Traditional Organized Crime in Chicago

For 78 years the Chicago Outfit or Mob has been the focus of the Chicago Crime Commission's1 efforts to combat organized crime. Indeed, the perception of organized crime in Chicago, as well as much of the city's reputation, stems from the notorious, and often inappropriately glamorized, activities of the Outfit from Al Capone in the 1930s through John DiFronzo in the 1990s. While the Outfit is most certainly still alive, much of the organized criminal activity presently targeting Chicago and its suburbs is perpetrated by new and emerging criminal enterprises. These groups range from local burglary rings to highly sophisticated international criminal organizations headquartered in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America, involved in corporate kidnapping and extortion, murder-for-hire, high-tech crime and drug trafficking. All require public attention and relentless law enforcement scrutiny. This paper deals with traditional organized crime in Chicago. Emerging Organized Crime will be dealt with in a forthcoming paper.     

我国刑事赔偿制度之改革

In reference to the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereinafter referred to “the Covenants”), the state compensation system of China in criminal justice shall be reformed as such: Compensation for a miscarriage of justice should not be determined by the results of first instance or second instance, but no guilty through retrial in the final trial upon finding of new evidences. If policemen, prosecutors and judiciaries take lawful measures, causing loss to the suspected due to arrest, detention or other enforcement in the criminal proceedings, the suspected should not get the state compensation for that even if he is decided no guilty in the final trial. If the suspected is cooped up illegally, he should get the state compensation even if being decided guilty finally. The measures of search and seizure should be included in coercive measures, hence differentiating the lawful search and seizure and the unlawful infringement of the property rights. Yang Yuguan, Professor of the Procedure Law Institute in China University of Political Science and Law, whose research mainly covers procedure law and human rights law. He wrote many books and essays, for instance, “Computer and Crime” (1986), “On Plea Bargaining” (1986), “Basic Education in Prisons in China” (1995), “The United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Policy” (1996), “On the Ratification and Implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (2000), “On Hearsay” (2001), “On Exclusionary Rule” (2002), “Human Rights Law: Study On International Covenant on Civil and Political Right” (2003), “The International Criminal Court: Idea, reality and Prospective” (2007), “Death Penalty Control with Procedural Law” (2006), “On Due Process of Law and Human Rights Protection” (2005). He was once a researcher fellow of Ministry of Justice of China, a member of the Crime Prevention Branch of the United Nations Office at Vienna, and an editor-in-chief in some books, such as “The United Nations Criminal Justice Norms and Standards”, “The United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies and their Comments”, “A Study On UN Convention of Anti-corruption”.     

“Where's Whitey?”: Black Mass, ethnic criminality, and the problem of the informant

The essay is an interdisciplinary examination of the popular American tradition of organized-crime narratives based on the testimony of criminal informants. Primarily, it examines the most prominent current instance of this tradition: a book entitled Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal (2000), depicting the recent scandal involving James “Whitey” Bulger. While this book is often received as a contemporary exposé of the ethical perils of informant use in combating organized crime, it actually reiterates the chronic interpretive pitfalls of more traditional “gangland” informant narratives like Murder, Inc. (1951) or Peter Maas's The Valachi Papers (1968). Black Mass's adoption of a classical “noir” literary form, meanwhile, imports certain traditional assumptions that often make these popular narratives immune to recent academic revisions: assumptions about the “Fordist” character of criminal organization, about the uncanny but invisible skills of modern ethnic gangsters, and about the relationship of the state to organized crime. Portions of this paper were presented at a conference hosted by the University of Chicago in May 2004: “Constructing the Current: Theorizing Media in a New Millennium”.     

韩国新的犯罪被害人保护制度及其启示——以实质性保护犯罪被害人为视角

韩国近年来通过制定《犯罪被害人保护法》、《犯罪被害人保护基金法》以及修订的《刑事诉讼法》等法律,构建了内容较为完善的犯罪被害人保护制度。韩国改革犯罪被害人保护制度,是以保障实体性利益为中心而进行的。以介绍韩国新的犯罪被害人保护制度为媒介,对我国相关法律制度中存在的问题提出改善建议。     

The use of corruption by “Russian” organized crime in the United States

This paper exemplifies the research of the Organized Crime Study Center in Vladivostok, Russia. Using secondary sources, it examines Russian organized crime in the United States in recent years. Special attention is given to the study of cases of corruption by Russian criminal groups in the United States. The author analyzes corruption, crime, and the practices of U.S. law enforcement agencies to combat them.     

激情犯基本问题初探

激情犯作为一种常见而又特殊的犯罪类型,无论在大陆法系还是英美法系刑法中,几乎都对其作出了相应的规定,而在我国刑法中却没有相关的规定,甚至在刑法学论著中也缺乏对其进行系统地论述。应界定激情犯的概念,确立激情犯的认定标准,根据激情犯的不同情形认定激情犯应负的刑事责任。     

中国法学引证研究之省思

The methodological basis of legal cytology is empirical positivism, i.e., the social empirical investigation method is employed to make a quantitative analysis on legal research papers. Cytology has limitation in methodology, behind which a complicated “knowledge-power” structure exists. Considering the matter in China’s present legal citation researches, the real quality of legal papers shall not be evaluated by the citation rate simply, but establishing a localized academic evaluation system to scale it comprehensively. Liu Lei, Ph.D of law, works at Suzhou University. His publications include Executing the deferment of prosecution with discretion (Chinese Journal of Law, 28(4), 2006), Spontaneous order: A puzzled analysis on Hayek’s liberty theory (Law & Social Development, 12(2), 2006), Reflections on the rule of mere-indictment-information in pretrial procedure (Global Law Review, 29(2), 2007), Recognition of local acknowledge from Chinese jurisprudence (Law & Social Development, 13(4), 2007), On the structure of the criminal trial in criminal appeal (Chinese Criminal Science, (4), 2007), An examination of criminal detention power from the perspective of the principle of separation of powers (Global Law Review, 30(3), 2008).