Perpetrators Of Serious Crimes Research Articles

The Role of State and Other Bodies in Financial Investigations of Criminal Offenses

Financial investigations are conducted with the aim of determining and uncovering corrupt criminal acts, as well as securing and confiscating the proceeds of the criminal act. In this way, state institutions with their entities and bodies represent an effective instrument in the fight against property-motivated crimes. For this reason, an attack on property, which was achieved in an illegal way, is considered the heaviest blow for perpetrators of serious crimes, and tools aimed at confiscating property benefits are assessed as the best way to combat organized crime. Illegally acquired property benefits from various criminal acts are, in most cases, concealed. Conducting financial investigations by competent authorities should meet certain requirements. Professional relationship and highly professional work are the key features of financial investigations. In this regard, the prosecutor is the leading person and coordinator, who has the most extensive task in terms of managing the financial investigation. The prosecutor engages numerous state authorities and financial experts in order to collect relevant data and information, and in the function of documenting illegally acquired property benefits. In this context, it is necessary to elaborate on the role and importance of criminal process subjects and state authorities in the procedures of conducting financial investigations in the case of confiscation of illegally acquired property benefits.

Dilema Hukuman Mati: Komparasi Antara Konvenan International Terkait Hak Asasi Manusia dan Pandangan Nahdlatul Ulama

The United Nations, through Resolution 77/2022 of the Global Moratorium on the Death Penalty, has encouraged world countries to postpone the death penalty because it is seen as a violation of Human Rights. In this article, the authors compare the arguments by the United Nations and human rights organizations in abolishing the death penalty with the religious views of the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). The research was conducted using qualitative methods, and data collection techniques were conducted through interviews with informants, namely several Nahdlatul Ulama women activists, as well as literature studies. NU generally approves of the death penalty for perpetrators of serious crimes, such as corruption and subversive acts that threaten national security, as long as there are solid and convincing evidences. NU stated that Islam recognizes the principle of human rights, but the death penalty can be applied to severe crimes to protect the security of the state and protect the right to life of more people. In this study, it was also found that Islamic law (in this case, the verses of the Quran) were in line with the Criminal Code and laws in Indonesia regarding the death penalty.

MANIFESTASI PRINSIP MORAL DALAM PEMBENTUKAN PENGADILAN PIDANA INTERNASIONAL

The establishment of the International Criminal Court is an answer to the view of natural law regarding past events where to try the perpetrators of serious crimes against human rights an ad hoc international criminal court was formed which violates the provisions that have been considered rigid as law by positivists. In view of natural law, the provisions referred to in the Rome Statute are formed which are the basis for the establishment of an international criminal tribunal that has the authority to try perpetrators of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. According to adherents of natural law theory, natural law doctrines will always color and inspire positive law, so that positive law always goes on the right track, both when laws are made, implemented and when used by judges in deciding cases in court. Natural law offers options through its higher-trusted rules. In this case the law of nature will function as an opposition to a tyrannical government (repeated often in history). The laws of nature are also dual in nature. At one end its function is to protect the rights, freedoms and independence of individuals, at the other end in a country, natural law as the embodiment of the highest value functions as a cry for a nation's integrity, in which operational forms of social solidarity, the common good, the public interest or social consensus.

Transfer Of Criminal Activities From One Country To Other

Extradition is defined as the surrender of criminals from one country to another. The purpose and objective of extradition is to ensure that the perpetrators of serious crimes cannot escape prosecution or punishment. Therefore, it is appropriate and appropriate for the criminal to be handed over for examination and trial by a state having jurisdiction. The issue raised is the extradition procedure according to Law Number 1 of 1979, the types of crimes that can be requested for the transfer of the perpetrators of criminal acts. The method used is a normative juridical approach, namely research based on literature study. The literature study was conducted to find secondary data, while secondary data were primary legal materials in the form of criminal law literature, extradition and other secondary legal materials. Meanwhile, the tertiary legal materials used in this paper are materials obtained from the internet. Extradition procedures according to Law Number 1 of 1979 are conditions that must be carried out in the process of transferring criminals from one country to another. The perpetrator of a criminal act who can be extradited is any person whom the competent authority from a foreign country requests from Indonesia, on the basis that the person concerned is suspected of committing a crime in order to be able to serve a sentence, while a crime that cannot be extradited is a political crime.

Due process implications of law enforcement agencies using Investigative Genetic Genealogy to solve serious crimes

Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) has opened up new frontiers in the search for the perpetrators of serious crimes. The pool of data held by consumer DNA databases has enabled law enforcement agencies to undertake database matching to find biological relatives of an unknown perpetrator. This relatively new forensic practice is not, however, without concerns when benchmarked against established norms of investigative practice and criminal procedure. The critical questions emerge: how should IGG be used and in what circumstances? In this article, we contend that the current laws in Australia are not capable of regulating IGG appropriately and legislative reform is required.

Alleged perpetrators of serious crimes applying for asylum in the Netherlands: Confidentiality, the interests of justice and security

The Refugee Convention states that asylum seekers should be excluded from refugee protection when there are ‘serious reasons for considering’ that they committed serious crimes. This article describes which alleged perpetrators are excluded in the Netherlands and discusses if and how confidentiality issues prevent disclosure of information about their nature and whereabouts. It concludes that law enforcement agencies typically receive information after a final decision to exclude has been made and that other actors are generally not informed at all. It is questioned to what extent this practice serves the interests of justice and security since it may frustrate successful prosecution and threaten security.

Transitional (In)Justice: An Exploration of Blanket Amnesties and the Remaining Controversies Around the Spanish Transition to Democracy

“Blanket amnesties” have generally been declared to be incompatible with international law due to the fact that they shield perpetrators of serious crimes from accountability as well as conflict with established principles regarding the applicability of statutory limitations to certain criminal offenses. The repeal of theFull StopandDue Obediencelaws in Argentina set a crucial precedent in the process toward the abrogation of legislation leading to impunity for those responsible for grave violations ofjus cogens.Additionally, permitting the prosecutions of Nazi officers Klaus Barbie and Erich Priebke in Europe confirmed the customary principle of the non-applicability of statutory limitations to crimes against humanity. However, for nearly 40 years, Spain's amnesty legislation continues to preclude any investigation or prosecution of the crimes committed during the civil war (1936–1939) and the Francoist regime (1939–1975). Spain's 1977 Amnesty Act has been widely characterized as a blanket amnesty and remains in force today despite allegations of noncompliance with international law and numerous requests from United Nations bodies to repeal it. This article explores the history of Spain's 1977 Amnesty Act, compares and contrasts it with other nations with similar amnesties, and makes the case that a successful transition from an authoritarian regime to a peaceful democracy is feasible without the use of overly broad “blanket” amnesties.

A Controversy of Faces: Images from Bali and Abu Ghraib1

The Bali bombing of 2002 and the US war against Iraq have been partly defined as media events by a series of photographs depicting the perpetrators of serious crimes in attitudes of jocularity . Photographs of “the smiling bombers” and US torturers at Abu Ghraib have caused shock and outrage because their grinning, smiling and laughing seems starkly at odds with the criminal acts for which the bombers and torturers have been charged, and, in some cases, convicted. Yet divergent meanings have been assigned to the photographs by western political elites. While the Bali bombers have been characterised as representing all that is wrong with and barbaric about militant Islam, the Abu Ghraib torturers have been dissociated from the US military and its values through their representation as a few isolated miscreants. However, I analyse the smiling of the bombers and torturers as forms of symbolic communication entailing resistance and mockery of state power on the part of the bombers, and domination and knowing humiliation on the part of the torturers. The clamping of meaning around these images by powerful political interests forecloses on the possibility of a deeper understanding of what is at stake in the war on terror and, for ordinary consumers of these images, encourages complicity in the rolling back of civil and political rights. 1Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Postcolonial Roundtable of the Postcolonial Research Group, University of Newcastle, 6 October 2004 and at the Religion and Politics in the International Multicultural Society panel at the British International Studies Association conference on 20 December 2004. My thanks to the participants at both those events for insightful comments. I also wish to extend particular thanks to Kate Manzo, Richard Fox, Robert Schütze, David Campbell and Pam Allen for their comments on written drafts and/or for suggesting helpful materials that may otherwise have escaped my attention. I hope the article lives up to the quality of their advice and suggestions.

Truth Commission Amnesties and the International Criminal Court

Truth commissions and the new International Criminal Court (ICC) appear to be very different mechanisms for dealing with human rights abuses: the primary purpose of a truth commission is to compile an accurate record of what happened, whereas the ICC is designed to punish individual perpetrators. This article considers how these two institutions will interact, and, more specifically, how the ICC Prosecutor will deal with perpetrators who have been granted amnesties by a truth commission in return for divulging their crimes. The ICC Statute, which contains the powers of the Court and the Prosecutor, fails to provide the ICC Prosecutor with any clear guidance on this question. On one interpretation it supports a prosecutorial policy that completely ignores amnesties, but on another, it supports the Prosecutor who decides to work cooperatively with those truth commissions that are able to demonstrate their legitimacy. Under a cooperative approach the Prosecutor would delay bringing any prosecutions until a truth commission has completed its work and then prosecute individuals from the pool who had not been granted amnesties. Such an approach could bolster the legitimacy of the ICC, by providing a principled basis for the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and assist truth commissions, by encouraging more perpetrators of serious crimes to apply for amnesties, and, in the process, divulge their secrets.

The Economics of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

It has sometimes been argued that one way to reduce the costs of law enforcement would be to reduce the probability of detection and conviction (hence saving those costs), while at the same time increasing the size of the punishment. Following this strategy would keep the expected costs (to a risk neutral criminal) of committing a crime constant and hence keep the deterrence level constant; it would have the benefit, though, of reducing costs to the rest of society. There are some well-known objections to such a policy. One such objection deals with marginal deterrence: A convicted murderer serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in a jurisdiction which bans capital punishment has nothing to lose from killing a prison guard—there is no marginal deterrence to the commission of a more serious crime or any additional crime for that matter. In fact, so long as there remains any upper limit to the amount of punishment that can be inflicted upon a convicted criminal, the only ways to create some type of marginal deterrence are to reduce the punishments for less serious crimes, which will either reduce the deterrence of those less serious crimes, or alternatively to require the use of more of society's scarce resources to increase the probabilities of apprehension and conviction. It is possible to reduce this marginal deterrence problem, however, by practicing cruel and unusual punishment on perpetrators of serious crimes, i.e. by raising the limits of allowable punishment. Anecdotal evidence suggests this practice is followed unofficially with child molesters and killers of prison guards and hence provides some additional deterrence against these crimes. Despite the theoretical validity of this argument, our society has chosen to impose a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Furthermore, over time we seem to have lowered the threshold of what is considered cruel and unusual. Following Dr. Pangloss, the concluding section of the paper examines why rational maximizers would choose to give up this additional potential deterrence. The explanations depend upon an assumed positive income elasticity of demand for humanitarianism or for insurance against the costs of punishing the innocent. While there are some reasons to accept the humanitarianism argument, the insurance argument seems more persuasive.