Reflections on the New Environmental Crime Directive

Environmental crime is one of the most lucrative forms of criminal activity. The illegal dumping of hazardous waste, trafficking of dangerous substances and smuggling of protected natural resources is estimated to be worth between EUR18 and EUR25 billion per year. The trafficking of endangered species generates the highest revenue of all types of environmental crime and is widely considered to be second in value only to drug trafficking. Environmental crime is believed to be expanding constantly. In spite of this, it is not currently a political priority, having taken a back seat to anti-terrorism measures since 11 September 2001. This article aims to show that environmental crime is one of the most serious forms of criminal activity - it threatens the very existence of mankind. In order to do this, the article begins by advancing a definition of environmental crime, which is intended to allow the reader better to understand its implications for our society. An attempt is then made to provide a financial estimate of the worldwide value of this criminal activity, in order to shed light on its scale and diversity. Next, the article examines various examples from European Union (?EU?) countries (Member States and candidate countries) in order to illustrate the ways in which police combat environmental crime. Examples of international cooperation in this field are also provided. Finally, the article proposes a number of possible paths for future action which might push environmental crime up the criminal law and crime-fighting policy agenda in EU Member States and EU policy as a whole. In this respect, the recent judgment by the European Court of Justice (?ECJ?) concerning European Community competence in criminal law provides interesting material for reflection.

Integrating the Complexity of Mental Disability into the Criminal Law Course

Today, the European Union and EU law influence essentially all areas of the law in Member States. Criminal and criminal procedural law are no exception. The European Union can require Member States to criminalize certain defined behaviors, determine the opinion on criminal sanctions that will punish perpetrators, and oblige the states to apply measures in certain areas of criminal law and laws on criminal procedure. As such, the harmonization of substantive and procedural norms in the Member States’ criminal law falls in the EU’s scope of authority. After the accession of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to the European Union, the harmonization of criminal and criminal procedural law throughout the European Union has been taken to a new level. There were also previously trust-based agreements on criminal co-operation between East and Central European countries, so mutual trust in EU cooperation was not entirely new in these countries. The harmonization has also been facilitated by the fact that there have historically been many similarities between Member States’ legal systems. One of the best examples of this is the habeas corpus principle. The harmonization of criminal procedure rules has already been developed with the countries of East and Central Europe. However, the case law of the European Court of Justice regularly shows that in former Western European countries there is a greater distrust of the legislation of the East-Central European countries and that the new East–Central Member States often approach a legal issue quite differently.

Although there has been a marked increase in studies of animal abuse from a variety of socio-legal and green criminological perspectives in the past two decades, we have a limited empirical understanding of the extent of animal victimization in environmental crime prosecutions in the United States. In order to better understand the nature and distribution of animal victimization in environmental crime prosecutions, we employ a content analysis of federal environmental crime cases, 2001–2011. Out of 972 cases, results show identifiable animal victimization plays a role in six percent of cases. Although animal victimization in environmental crime may be extensive, its role in environmental prosecutions appears secondary. We conclude with possibilities of expanding animal protection via wildlife and environmental law connections.

Sharing Secrets: Examining Deferred Action and Transparency in Immigration Law

Contents Foreword ix Leon Wildes Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. Primer: Understanding How Prosecutorial Discretion Functions in the Immigration System 7 2. The Early Years: The Deportation Case of John Lennon and Evolution of Immigration Prosecutorial Discretion 14 3. Lessons from Criminal Law: How Immigration Prosecutorial Discretion Compares to the Criminal System 33 4. Deferred Action: Examining the Jewel (or a Precious Form) of Prosecutorial Discretion 54 5. Presidential Portrait: Prosecutorial Discretion during the Obama Administration 88 6. Going to Court: The Role of the Judiciary in Prosecutorial Discretion Decisions 109 7. Open Government: Transparency in Prosecutorial Discretion and Why It Matters 134 8. Reform: Improving Prosecutorial Discretion in the Immigration System 146 Abbreviations 157 Authorities 161 Notes 169 Index 223 About the Author 233

In these thirty years, China's criminal law system has experienced groundbreaking change and made constant progress toward realizing criminal justice. Modern criminal law systems include substantive criminal law, criminal procedure law, and other relevant elements of the legal system. Substantive criminal law contains regulations on the definition of crime, criminal liability, and criminal sanctions; it plays an essential role in the legal system. When compared to other areas of law, substantive criminal law has two distinctive characteristics. First, the spectrum of the social relationships regulated by substantive criminal law is the most extensive of any category of law. Second, the force of substantive criminal law is the most powerful of any legal category; substantive criminal law ensures the effective implementation of every other law and is the tool of last resort for protecting the government and the people from illegal activities. Keywords: China; criminal justice; criminal law; criminal liability; legal system; regulations; sanctions

European Union Directive have same protection of the victim in territory of European Union’s member states. But, implementation of European Protection Order needs to unification of criminal laws in the European Union’s members. But, the European Union has not yet achieved the goal of unifying the criminal laws in its member states. Accordingly, European Union Directive by creation, issuing and enforcing of European Protection Order have expectations of victim’s same protection, regardless of his/her nationality in throughout of the member states’ territory. European Protection Order is new mechanism of European Union’s criminal law and lacks a record in others criminal law. Therefore, European Protection Order by victim-state is issued for enforcement in the territory of offender-convicting state to defend the rights of the citizen based on domestic criminal law in the territory of the extraterritorial. The subject matter of paper is to examine the dimensions and achievements and its connection with criminal laws’ principals. Paper approach is descriptive and analytical relying European Union Directive. on Research question is: What is the status of victim’ European Protection Order in extraterritorial and its achievements in European Union criminal law? Findings of research indicate that exact implementation of European Protection Order also require.

"Immigration and Criminal Law in the European Union: the Legal Measures and Social Consequences of Criminal Law in Member States on Trafficking and Smuggling in Human Beings" published on 01 Jan 2006 by Brill | Nijhoff.

The scientific community still does not have uniformity with regards to the definition of crime, although this concept is crucial in criminology, without which the existence and development of this science is impossible. Crime is a multifaceted phenomenon; thus, its examination within the framework of a single science does not reflect all of the aspects. The author examines various existing approaches towards the definition of crime; analyzes the concepts of natural criminal and the counter-theories. The question of the immanence of crime is explored. However, it does not seem possible to determine the only reasonable viewpoint and deny the rational kernel of other approaches. The analysis of the existing concepts and approaches towards definition of crime once again demonstrates the controversy of the question. Therefore, the analysis of opinions allows concluding on the need for classification crime, including via specific understanding of this concept. Such classification sufficiently reflects the extent of current public awareness of the criminal law, while retaining semantic load from the perspective of criminology. It also prompts the development of research on the social consequences (cost) of crime, since namely this approach seems logical for calculation of the social consequences (cost) of crime.

A new criminal law has emerged in the last quarter century. The dominant goal of the new criminal law is preventive detention-incarceration to incapacitate dangerous persons. The emergence of the new criminal law has remade both sentencing law and definitions of crimes themselves. The new criminal law has also begun to remake the law of evidence. As incapacitation has become an accepted goal of criminal punishment, the rationale of the character rule has become less compelling, and the rule itself has begun to wane in criminal practice. These changes have been subtle, but they have also been both radical and fairly rapid. There is no indication that the law will reverse course. Indeed, the law's response to the threat of terrorism has only accelerated the move toward the new criminal law. In coming years, the Supreme Court will be forced to address a variety of difficult constitutional questions that the new criminal law presents. Ironically, the safest solution may be to embrace preventive detention as an accepted function of the criminal law. Doing so would alter the Supreme Court doctrines which distinguish the civil from the criminal-doctrines that limit the reach of the Bill of Rights. The procedural protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights should be extended to more citizens faced with incarceration regardless of whether the purpose of incarceration is incapacitation rather than punishment or deterrence. As the new criminal law remakes the American justice system, the Court must recognize that preventive detention is now a core function of the criminal law. That recognition will have the counterintuitive effect of expanding the constitutional protections given to citizens facing imprisonment.

The free movement of people across internal borders, and the high level of integration between EU member states, demands the development of cooperation in the fight against crime. That is why the EU is empowered to ensure the coordination of activities of member states in the fight against crime. This fight is one of the elements of EU policy in the areas of freedom, security and justice. One of the EU’s anti-crime activities is the harmonization of national criminal law, the main idea of which is to ensure the same level of responsibility for crimes of a cross-border dimension in all EU member states. The article analyzes the legal basis for the harmonization of criminal law within the EU, classifies these activities, shows the features of certain types (modes) of harmonization, as well as shows the place of criminal law harmonization in the EU system of combating crime. The analysis of the definition «EU criminal law» and other concepts relating to legal cooperation in criminal matters within the EU has a special place in this article. Based on an analysis of the positions of a number of researchers, the author comes to the conclusion that the concept of «EU criminal law» is an «umbrella» definition, which is understood as a set of rules relating to the harmonization of criminal law and criminal procedure law. In addition, the paper shows the features of harmonization of criminal law within the most serious types of crimes, such as terrorism, human trafficking, etc. The EU has a competence on the harmonization of national criminal law, but EU institutions are entitled to accept only framework norms that do not have a direct effect needing implementation into national law. At the moment, the EU’s primary Law contains the necessary legal framework for the harmonization of national criminal law. The analysis of this framework allows us to identify three main modes of harmonization of criminal law within the EU: functional (basic) harmonization, annex harmonization, and auxiliary harmonization.

Europe’s two basic regulatory texts, the 1981 Council of Europe’s Convention 108 and the 1995 European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive, say little on enforcement in general and on the use of criminal law in particular. As the 1995 Directive left the choice of the enforcement regime, including the establishment of appropriate sanctions and remedies, to the discretion of the EU Member States, the use of criminal sanctions varies from one Member State to another: there are Member States with only criminal sanctions, but most Member States have a mixed system of criminal and administrative enforcement. In practice, the criminal law provisions in countries where they exist are seldom used due to both institutional resistance from prosecutors and courts, and some characteristics of criminal law. There is indeed a general preference for administrative procedures controlled by the data protection authorities. However, the use of administrative sanctions in the EU is only of a recent date. Most national data protection Acts give no guidance on the choice of administrative or criminal sanctions and on the discretion of the data protection authorities to impose administrative sanctions. Such discretion for data protection authorities might raise questions, especially in the light of a trend towards high administrative fines in the EU Member States. The reform of the 1995 Directive shows the investment of the EU in a harmonised system of administrative sanctions. The minimal attention of the EU to criminal sanctions, on the other hand, can arguably be explained by the scarce case law on the matter and by the sensitivity of the use of criminal law in Community (former first pillar) matters. Neither do the reform instruments contain any provisions on the use of criteria to be taken into account when choosing between administrative or criminal enforcement. The lack of harmonisation goes against the aim of a regulation to establish a uniform data protection framework, is oblivious to the explicit powers for the EU created with the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon to impose criminal law obligations via directives, creates legal uncertainty for companies and the data subject, and might invite forum shopping, i.e., the fact that companies can move their main establishment to a Member State with the most flexible sanction powers. This chapter addresses seven characteristics of criminal law, which explain why Member States prefer to use administrative law. However, regulators should keep the different ratios of administrative law and criminal law in mind when selecting the appropriate enforcement regime. Principles of criminalisation should guide the regulators in their criminalisation exercise: it must be seen as a last resort, for serious cases only. Administrative law may turn out to be more accommodating to the dynamic character of data protection, but is in need of a fundamental rights agenda.

CRIME, MOST MODERN SOCIOLOGISTS AGREE, IS BEHAVIOR THAT IS DEFINED BY THE legal codes and sanctioned by the institutions of criminal justice. It is generally agreed, moreover, that the legal definitions of crime and the criminal ultimate standards for deciding whether a scholarly work should be considered criminological. (1) Because of this, the contention that imperialist war and racism crimes is not only considered an unjustifiable imposition of values, but also an incompetent use of the notion of crime. In order to challenge this prevailing judgment, it is necessary to critically review some of the complex issues involved in a thirty-year-old controversy about the definition of crime. I. The Thirty-Year-Old Controversy Toward the end of the Great Depression, sociologists became involved in a controversy about legal definitions of crime and criminals. At least two developments stimulated the issue raised at the time: the rapid growth of a corporate liberal, sociological empiricism and the socially critical interest in white collar crime. The former gave rise to what was primarily a scientific, methodological critique of the traditional legal definition. The second generated a substantive and ethical criticism. The positivist, reformist, and traditionalist aspects of this controversy will be selectively reviewed, as were represented by three of the chief participants: Thorsten Sellin (1938), Edwin Sutherland (1945), and Paul Tappan (1947). A. Positivism and the Definition of Crime In the controversy, American sociologists and lawyers argued furiously about definitions that distinguish crimes from other types of behavior and criminals from other types of persons. It was observed that traditionally, criminologists used definitions provided by the criminal and, as a result, the domain of criminology was restricted to the study of behavior encompassed by that However, one sociologist, Thorsten Sellin, declared in 1937 that if the criminologist is interested in developing a science of criminal behavior, he must rid himself of the shackles forged by criminal Criminologists, Sellin added, should not permit nonscientists (e.g., lawyers or legislators) to fix the terms and boundaries of the scientific study of crime. Scientists have their own unique goals that include the achievement of causal theories of criminal behavior. In evaluating the usefulness of legal definitions for scientific purposes, Sellin noted that such definitions merely denote external similarities rather than natural properties of criminal behavior. The legal definitions, therefore, do not arise from the intrinsic nature of the subject matter at hand. They are, in Sellin's view, inappropriate as scientific definitions of crime (1938, 20-21). How can scientific definitions be developed? In an effort to answer this, Sellin pointed out that scientists interested in universal relationships. Since represent such relationships (they are found wherever groups found), studies of conduct norms afford a sounder basis for the development of scientific categories than a study of crime as defined by the criminal law. Such a study, Sellin added, would involve the isolation and classification of norms into universal categories, transcending political and other boundaries, a necessity imposed by the logic of science. Conduct norms transcend any concrete group or institution such as the state, in Sellin's opinion, because they not the creation of any normative group; not confined within political boundaries; not necessarily embodied in the law (1937, 30). Sellin's argument, it should be noted, was organized around the assumption that scientific definitions determined by the goals and methods of the scientist qua scientist. The limits of Sellin's critique, consequently, focused primarily on the achievement of scientific explanations. …

در حقوق کیفری به‌طور ویژه و در سایر شاخه‌های حقوق به‌طور کلّی تعریف و تبیین موضوع شاخۀ حقوقی مربوطه، از اهمیت بسیار بالایی برخوردار است؛ زیرا هم گستره و حدود و ثغور آن رشته حقوقی را مشخص نموده و بدین‌ترتیب مانع تشتّت شاخه‌های حقوقی شده و هم سبب احترام به حقوق شهروندی در سطح اجتماع می‌گردد.از حدود 300 سال پیش و با شکل‌گیری بارقه‌های حقوق کیفری مدرن در جهان و حتی قبل از آن با پیدایش ادیان الهی و آسمانی همچون شرع مقدس اسلام ضرورت بیان پیشینی و قبح عقاب بلابیان در چهارچوب اصلی اساسی تحت ‌عنوان «اصل قانونی بودن جرایم» به‌عنوان یکی از حقوق بنیادین بشری قوانین اساسی کشورها را درنوردید. یکی از اولین ملزومات اجرا و اعمال این اصل در حقوق کیفری دول دارای حقوق‌نوشته نظیر ایران، توسّل به «تعریف جرم» در قانون مجازات و جرایم آن کشور می‌باشد. با عنایت به تصویب قانون جدید مجازات اسلامی در اردیبهشت 1392 و لازم‌الاجرا شدن آن از خرداد 1392 به نقد تعریف جرم در مادّه 2 این قانون و چالش‌های فراروی آن در نوشتار حاضر می‌پردازیم.