Prevention of money laundering and the role of asset recovery

The purpose of this paper is to examine the increasing emphasis of the UK anti-money laundering (AML) legislative framework, on the financial arrangements of criminals. Our qualitative study engaged key stakeholders from the AML environment through a series of focus groups. This included law enforcement; accountants; prosecutors; bankers and, importantly, ex-offenders. We argue that the inclusion of the views of a traditionally hard to reach group of ex-offenders, adds significantly to knowledge and understanding about effectiveness of AML. The research findings suggest that, at first glance, the focus on asset recovery has been successful. However, our respondents shared with us areas of tension and inconsistencies in application of the law, in particular between police and the courts. For example, whether it was better to prosecute the predicate offence  separately or in addition to the offence of money laundering; or whether to pursue criminal or civil recovery. We further find that criminals have been able to use their knowledge to circumvent the system, suggesting that greater effort is needed to promote cooperation, rather than competition, in successfully detecting and prosecuting offenders.     

A Faction of One: Revisiting Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention

This essay on Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, Mary Bilder's revisionist account (2016) of James Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention argues that her central thesis, which is that Madison substantially revised the Notes long after the Convention adjourned, is groundbreaking but will have no effect on constitutional law. Madison's Hand is groundbreaking because the book yields many powerful insights into the deliberations of the Convention and into the evolution of Madison's thought. Nevertheless, constitutional practice in the Supreme Court and among elite lawyers is so divorced from the Notes that even a dramatic shift in their interpretation will not disturb the evolution of judicial doctrine applying the text written in 1787.     

Innovation capital

In this paper we compare the relationship between a firm’s innovation capital and the likelihood that a firm will commercialize an invention. Our index of innovation capital is the product of the firm’s human capital, social capital, and reputational capital. We find from our empirical experiment, which uses Small Business Innovation Research data, that innovation capital is a statistically more important entrepreneurial input to the innovation output of commercialization than any of its components.     

Secondary Confessions as Post-identification Feedback: How Jailhouse Informant Testimony Can Alter Eyewitnesses’ Identification Decisions

Prior research has shown that primary confession evidence can alter eyewitnesses’ identifications and self-reported confidence. The present study investigated whether secondary confession evidence from a jailhouse informant could have the same effect. Participants (N?=?368) watched a video of an armed robbery and made an identification decision from a photo lineup. Except for those in the no-feedback conditions, all participants then read that certain lineup members either confessed to the crime, denied involvement, or were implicated by a jailhouse informant. Jailhouse informant testimony implicating the identified lineup member led participants to have significantly higher confidence in their identification. In contrast, jailhouse informant testimony that implicated a lineup member other than the identified led participants to have significantly lower confidence in their initial identification, and 80% of these witnesses changed their identification. These results indicate that jailhouse informant testimony can influence eyewitnesses’ confidence and their identification decisions.     

The role of Title IV-E education and training in child protection workforce diversification

ABSTRACT

Educating, training, and diversifying the workforce are strategies that may help reduce racial/ethnic disparities that plague child protection system (CPS). Title IV-E education and training programs support the development of a specially trained, highly skilled workforce; yet, little research examining their impact on workforce diversification exists. The current study assessed the relationship between Title IV-E education and training and workforce diversity and leadership in a state system that is plagued with racial disparities using data from a statewide child welfare survey (n = 679) and existing population-level sources. Findings revealed that while children of color were disproportionately overrepresented in the CPS, professionals of color were disproportionately underrepresented (as compared to the state’s overall population and the population of children served within CPS). Title IV-E education and training programs were associated with both child protection workforce diversity and CPS leadership roles. Implications for recruitment, retention, education, and partnership are discussed.     

Pampered or pariah: does animal type influence the interaction between animal attitude and empathy?

ABSTRACT

Research into the interaction between deliberate harm of animals and potential risk for human directed violence has burgeoned in the past two decades. In light of an underlying premise that attitudes are predictive of behaviour, a number of researchers have examined demographic and personality variables that affect attitudes to, and by extrapolation behaviours towards, animals. One particularly active topic of research in this area is the potential relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals, with researchers consistently finding that those with higher human-directed empathy scores tend to hold more pro-animal welfare attitudes. The current study adds to this literature by evaluating the effect of different animal types (Pet, Pest or Profit) in this overall animal attitude/human-directed empathy relationship with a large (n?=?1606), community-based, Australian sample. As anticipated, attitudes towards animals in the Pet category were significantly more pro-welfare than for either Pest or Profit animals and women indicated more pro-welfare attitudes across all three than men. The strength and significance of the relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals varied across Pet, Pest and Profit animal categories and affective vs cognitive empathy. The strongest correlation was found between Pet and the Empathic Concern subscale of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The implications of these differences for the previously observed link between attitudes to animals and empathy, humane education and future research directions are discussed.     

The Responsibility Gap in Corporate Crime

In many cases of criminality within large corporations, senior management does not commit the operative offense—or conspire or assist in it—but nonetheless bears serious responsibility for the crime. That responsibility can derive from, among other things, management’s role in cultivating corporate culture, in failing to police effectively within the firm, and in accepting lavish compensation for taking the firm’s reins. Criminal law does not include any doctrinal means for transposing that form of responsibility into punishment. Arguments for expanding doctrine—including broadening of the presently narrow “responsible corporate officer” doctrine—so as to authorize such punishment do not fare well under the justificatory demands of criminal law theory. The principal obstacle to such arguments is the large industrial corporation itself, which necessarily entails kinds and degrees of delegation and risk-taking that do not fit well with settled concepts about mens rea and omission liability. Even the most egregious and harmful management failures must be addressed through design and regulation of the corporation rather than imposition of individual criminal liability.     

The Centrality of Theory in Modern Day Crime Prevention: Developments,Challenges, and Opportunities

Theory matters in crime prevention. Indeed, but this is hardly the full story. Crime prevention is oftentimes viewed as atheoretical—not grounded in the etiology of crime and offending. Reasons abound for this view, and the recent interest in an evidence-based approach to policy-making has been at the forefront. This article reviews the role that theory plays in modern day crime prevention, with a special focus on the three main crime prevention strategies: developmental, community, and situational. The review identifies a number of key challenges and opportunities for making theory more central to crime prevention. It suggests that the classification system employed in situational crime prevention has allowed for a more explicit connection between sound theory and prevention techniques, and may provide important lessons for developmental and community crime prevention.     

Survey Research and Social Class in Venezuela: Evaluating Alternative Measures and Their Impact on Assessments of Class Voting

The ascendance of the left in Latin America has sparked new interest in the politicization of social class. What factors should scholars consider in choosing and constructing measures of social class in survey research? To what degree can measurement affect results? This article evaluates several common measures in terms of validity and reliability. It then shows that alternative measures produce strikingly different results when examining class voting in Venezuela's 2006 presidential election. Simple measures of household income or wealth, which fare poorly in validity assessment, suggest minimal levels of class voting. Various socioeconomic scales that also incorporate data on education and, in some cases, weights for household composition, suggest very high levels of class voting. The article provides guidelines for evaluating measures and illuminates the debate on class voting in Venezuela. Scholars have reached contradictory conclusions while using different measures, but the decisive role of measurement has gone unrecognized.