Proving the Dough: National Crime Agency v Baker & Ors

This note examines the High Court's recent decision in National Crime Agency v Baker to discharge three unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) relating to properties in London. The UWOs were originally granted on the basis that the properties were suspected of constituting ‘recoverable property’ for the purposes of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The decision is the first to overturn an UWO. Given the few UWO applications to date, it is an important contribution to the available jurisprudence on the mechanism.  This comment examines the presiding judge's statements on the evidential thresholds to be met in raising a presumption that property constitutes the proceeds of crime and looks at the decision's emphasis on enforcement authorities’ obligations to meet proportionality requirements. It reviews the Court's discussion of complex property ownership structures. It concludes that the judgment raises issues which enforcement authorities may find challenging in seeking to use UWOs in future investigations.     

Networks as ‘laboratories of experience’: exploring the life cycle of the suffrage movement and its aftermath in Ireland 1870–1937

ABSTRACT

Applying an innovative conceptual framework this article presents an interdisciplinary re-appraisal of the suffrage movement and its aftermath in Ireland throughout the years 1870–1937. New social movement theory is utilised to consider how, in the words of the Italian sociologist Alberto Melucci ‘the submerged networks of social movements are laboratories of experience’. Going beyond the previously published work of each author, this article uses the sociological lens of ‘laboratories of experience’ to re-analyse aspects of the suffrage movement, female activism and the wider women's movement in Ireland. This application of social movement theory to female networks, their origins, aims and strategies, along with their interconnectedness, provides a more nuanced and detailed understanding of the ‘life-cycle’ of this movement. The article aims to demonstrate how an analysis of network dynamics and application of the concept of ‘latency’ is useful in further understanding the significance, impact and longevity of the women's movement in Ireland.     

Rebel or Rioter? Luddites then and now

The Encyclopaedia Britannica contains an entry under the heading ‘Luddite’ and has had such an entry for over 100 years. This essay employs standard discourse analysis techniques to identify changes in the way the Luddites have been presented to the public by the Encyclopaedia over the same period. It is argued that as the potential readership has broadened and deepened across class boundaries, so has the narrative shifted from autocratic towards populist and the Luddites from rioting simpletons to rebel handicraftsmen.     

A Better Deal? Negotiated Responses to the Proceeds of Grand Corruption

Criminal Law Forum - Judicially supervised negotiated settlements have featured heavily of late in discourse on responses to financial crimes committed by corporations. The United States has...     

Creating Student-Scholar-Activists: Discourse Instruction and Social Justice in Political Science Classrooms

This article advocates the use of discourse instruction as a means of integrating issues of social justice into the classroom and transcending the debate over politicization in academia. The field of political science is at an uncomfortable juncture; it is faced with an obligation to ourselves and our communities to critically engage and push back against the more toxic components of the political moment, staying relevant and accurate and providing students with the tools they need to process the political world; while, also resisting the dual pressures to either stay apolitical/non-partisan, or to become a current events class, ceding class time to deciphering the day’s political events. We argue that discourse instruction can be used to teach the skills of social justice in political science classrooms. In addition, the infusion of diversity into the classroom through discourse instruction is both a means of enhancing student learning by engaging in high-impact practices of teaching and learning and political activism.     

The globalization of sex tourism and Cuba: A commodity chains approach

During the past decade Cuba has become a haven for international sex tourists. How do we explain this phenomenon? This article contends that the Cuban experience must be understood as part of a set of larger global processes. It utilizes a commodity chains framework in order to uncover the links between the local sex tourism industry and these larger international processes. The framework highlights aspects of production and consumption of an illicit blobal commodity and shows how tourism aimed at consuming sexual services has become a truly global industry in recent years. It also, however, seeks to avoid global determinism by showing how particular aspects of the Cuban political economy and policymaking have shaped the local development and organization of the Cuban link in the chain.     

Do Child Development Accounts Promote Account Holding,Saving, and Asset Accumulation for Children's Future? Evidence from a Statewide Randomized Experiment

This study examines the impacts of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) on account holding, saving, and asset accumulation for children, using data from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment (SEED OK). SEED OK, a policy test of universal and progressive CDAs, provides a 529 college savings plan account to every infant in the treatment group with automatic account opening and an initial deposit. SEED OK also encourages treatment participants to open their own 529 accounts with an account opening incentive and a savings match. Using a sample of infants randomly selected from birth records (N = 2,670) and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, this study runs probit and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. Analyses show significant differences between treatment and control groups in all outcome measures in the targeted accounts. Nearly 100 percent of the treatment group accepted the automatically opened state‐owned account. Compared to 1 percent of the control group, 16 percent of the treatment group hold a participant‐owned account. On average, the treatment group has saved significantly larger amounts in participant‐owned accounts, although a difference in savings amount is modest between the two groups ($47 vs. $13). A difference in total 529 assets of $1,040 is estimated between the treatment and control groups. These early findings from SEED OK suggest that CDAs have positive effects on savings and asset accumulation for children's future development. Further research is required to test long‐term cost effectiveness of CDAs.