Complicity and causality

This paper considers some aspects of the morality of complicity, understood as participation in the wrongs of another. The central question is whether there is some way of participating in the wrongs of another other than by making a causal contribution to them. I suggest that there is not. In defending this view I encounter, and resist, the claim that it undermines the distinction between principals and accomplices. I argue that this distinction is embedded in the structure of rational agency.

The impact of the US legislation on company measures of control and prevention

The spectacular business scandals in recent years have led both the legislative and business companies to rethink and redesign their strategies. This article analyzes the worldwide impact of reforms in economic crime legislation emanating from the USA. Empirical data are reported showing that the US regulations are generating a spillover effect spreading beyond its sphere of operation. It is particularly notable that international stock-exchange-listed companies are orienting themselves increasingly toward the legal standards of the USA. Translated from the German by Jonathan Harrow, Bielefeld.

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Measuring corporate environmental crime rates: progress and problems

The problem of corporate crime rates has been the subject of debate, speculation and operationalization for decades, largely stemming from the complexity of measuring this type of crime. Examining corporate environmental crime poses challenges and creates opportunities for advancing the discussion of corporate crime rates, but criminologists are less familiar with environmental data. In the current paper, we review the strengths and weaknesses of existing environmental data that can be used to construct the components of an environmental crime rate. We also present a corporate environmental crime rate derived from data on violations of the Clean Water Act and describe problems with using it in real world data. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.

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Beyond Peirce: The New Science of Semiotics and the Semiotics of Law

This paper shows how Peirce's semeiotic could be turned into a powerful science. The New Science of Semiotics provides not only a new paradigm and an empirical justification for all these applications, but also a rational and systematic procedure for carrying them out as well. Thus the New Science of Semiotics transforms the philosophy of law into the science of legal scholarship, the discipline that I call jurisology.

Bank regulation and supervision in bank-dominated financial systems: a comparison between Japan and Germany

This paper compares bank regulation and supervision in Japan and Germany. We consider these countries because they both have bank-dominated financial systems and their banking systems are often lumped together as one model, yet, bank stability differs significantly. We show that Japan and Germany have chosen different approaches to bank regulation and supervision and ask why they made their choices. We argue that bank regulation and supervision were less efficient in Japan than in Germany and that these differences were decisive for bank behavior.

Aspects of the evolution of extra-legal protection in Bulgaria (1989–1999)

In this paper I look at the interplay between organised crime, law, and the state and argue that the evolution of organised crime organisations in Bulgaria was shaped by the dynamic transformation of the legal and economic environment during the 90s, by policies of the state, such as, for example, the regulation of the private security and insurance industries (in 1994 and 1998 respectively), which mafia-like organisations used as fronts for their activities during the 90s and by the ability of organised crime organisations to adapt to the constantly changing conditions. In the first section of the paper I look at the emergence of the private security and private protection industries in Bulgaria with an emphasis on the development of organisations using the threat of violence to settle disputes, discourage competition, retrieve stolen property and collect debts. In the second section of the paper, I follow the transformation of certain type of private security companies into insurance companies, which directed their activities at properties liable to risk, for instance cars and small shops. They enjoyed an advantage over ordinary insurance companies because they possessed greater information about the risks, which could affect the property of their clients, for example theft (car theft in particular). The concluding section discusses the development of silovi grupirovki (the Bulgarian name for organised crime organisations) after 1998 when a very strict licensing regime for insurance companies was introduced and alleged to be mafia-like organisations were removed from the insurance market.

The Organisation of Drug Supply: South Asian Criminal Enterprise in the UK

This paper examines the structure and modus operandi of South Asian criminal organisations operating in the UK. It is based on empirical research conducted between 2005 and 2006 among prisoners sentenced for drug offences, a number of drug distributors operating in the market, and observers with a knowledge of the drugs business working for the police force or for rehabilitation services. First, the paper offers an overview of the debate on organised crime, and after a methodological note, the research findings are utilised to propose a typology. Hypotheses are formulated around the illicit drug enterprises involved in British markets. Finally, the implications for law enforcement with respect to these enterprises are discussed.

Does illegality breed violence? Drug trafficking and state-sponsored protection rackets

Illegality does not necessarily breed violence. The relationship between illicit markets and violence depends on institutions of protection. When state-sponsored protection rackets form, illicit markets can be peaceful. Conversely, the breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets, which may result from well-meaning policy reforms intended to improve law enforcement, can lead to violence. The cases of drug trafficking in contemporary Mexico and Burma show how a focus on the emergence and breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets helps explain variation in levels of violence both within and across illicit markets.

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Singing the same tune? International continuities and discontinuities in how police talk about using force

This article focuses on a research project conducted in six jurisdictions: England, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Venezuela, and Brazil. These societies are very different ethnically, socially, politically, economically, historically and have wildly different levels of crime. Their policing arrangements also differ significantly: how they are organised; how their officers are equipped and trained; what routine operating procedures they employ; whether they are armed; and much else besides. Most relevant for this research, they represent policing systems with wildly different levels of police shootings, Police in the two Latin American countries represented here have a justified reputation for the frequency with which they shoot people, whereas at the other extreme the police in England do not routinely carry firearms and rarely shoot anyone. To probe whether these differences are reflected in the way that officers talk about the use of force, police officers in these different jurisdictions were invited to discuss in focus groups a scenario in which police are thwarted in their attempt to arrest two youths (one of whom is a known local criminal) by the youths driving off with the police in pursuit, and concludes with the youths crashing their car and escaping in apparent possession of a gun, It might be expected that focus groups would prove starkly different, and indeed they were, but not in the way that might be expected. There was little difference in affirmation of normative and legal standards regarding the use of force. It was in how officers in different jurisdictions envisaged the circumstances in which the scenario took place that led Latin American officers to anticipate that they would shoot the suspects, whereas officers in the other jurisdictions had little expectation that they would open fire in the conditions as they imagined them to be.

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The effect of university culture and stakeholders’ perceptions on university–business linking activities

The present work discusses the effects of university culture and structure on university–business relations, focusing on knowledge transfer activities. It puts forward the thesis that when links between university and business are introduced into the university system as a turn-key proposition rather than as developmental process, the prevailing university culture and structure will exert resistance against change and will oppose the creation of appropriate structures to promote them, with deleterious effects for the university.

Excuses in law and in morality: a response to Marcia Baron

In this analysis of Marcia Baron’s account of excuses, I seek to do two things. I try to draw out the nature of the distinction between forgiving and excusing. I also defend the distinction between excuses (like duress), and denials of responsibility (like insanity).

Habermas and Deleuze on Law and Adjudication

This article stages an encounter between Habermas and Deleuze on law, rights, and adjudication. Most of the article is spent developing Habermas’s concept of adjudication as the application of communicatively generated norms. This application, I argue, involves a complex temporality that is at once retrospective and non-creative. Deleuze is used to critique this concept of adjudication in favor of one based on concrete situations and the creation of new problems. In so doing, I will develop Deleuze’s notorious, and notoriously hostile, remarks on human rights and philosophies of communication by relating them to discourse ethics and to the positive conception of law and judgment that can be drawn from his work.

On special protections for rescuers and helpers

There is something intuitively correct about singling out emergency workers for legal protection, and for criminalizing not just assault, but obstruction. Moreover, at least one sophisticated theory of right and wrong – Scanlon’s—indicates some deep reasons for endorsing these intuitions. After applying Scanlon’s theory in the relevant way, I want to argue that the same grounds it provides for recent Scottish legislation and UK sentencing guidelines can also be given for punishing more seriously offences that current English law trivialises.

The Costs to Criminal Theory of Supposing that Intentions are Irrelevant to Permissibility

I attempt to describe the several costs that criminal theory would be forced to pay by adopting the view (currently fashionable among moral philosophers) that the intentions of the agent are irrelevant to determinations of whether his actions are permissible (or criminal).

Criminal victimization in contemporary China: a review of the evidence and challenges for future research

The rapid economic growth in China over recent decades has been accompanied by higher levels of crime, but there have been few studies of the Chinese experience of criminal victimization. A recent victimization survey of a representative sample of households in Tianjin represents a major effort to fill this gap in the literature. The present paper reviews the research based on the Tianjin survey along with other studies of crime and criminal victimization in China that have been published since 1990. We summarize the major findings, discuss the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies that have been applied, identify the limitations of the research to date, and offer suggestions for future research.

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The profitability life-cycle of direct investment: an international panel study

In this paper we test competing hypotheses about the shape of the time-profile of foreign direct investment profitability on a panel of countries. Using partial linearization method we derive the time-profile of the cumulative profitability for the stock of direct investment from aggregate macroeconomic data. By testing the non-linearity hypothesis of the cumulative profitability life-cycle of direct investment we find a cubic curve.

Causeless complicity

I argue, contrary to standard claims, that accomplice liability need not be a causal relation. One can be an accomplice to another’s crime without causally contributing to the criminal act of the principal. This is because the acts of aid and encouragement that constitute the basis for accomplice liability typically occur in contexts of under- and over-determination, where causal analysis is confounded. While causation is relevant to justifying accomplice liability in general, only potential causation is necessary in particular cases. I develop this argument through the example of the role of U.S. legal officials in abetting the acts of unlawful interrogation that have taken place since 2001. I also suggest that there may be a limited justification for ex post ratificatory accomplice liability.

To Discipline and Publish: Scottsboro and Narratives of Delinquency

With the economics of racism of the 1930s and 1950s American South in mind, our essay explores the relationship between the act of writing and institutional penology. Taking an obscure, but visceral autobiographical account by Paterson and Conrad (Scottsboro Boy, Garden City Doubleday, 1950), we examine how discipline, punishment, and institutional identity emerge out of publishing, or, as Foucault put it, “the power of writing.” Narratives of delinquency born out of a racialized penal economy tend to resist attempts to tame the criminal, making institutional survival a productive discourse, and its articulation, a unique revolutionary act.

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