Regulation Of Crimes Research Articles

System of criminal law norms ensuring transport safety

The article carried out the analysis and systematisation of the criminal law provisions aimed at ensuring transport safety. The author draws attention to the fact that such norms are contained in both the General and the Special parts of the criminal code. The article analyses various concepts of transport security for the possibility or impossibility of their use in criminal law. It is argued that the norms of the Special part of the criminal code can be divided into two groups – regulating crimes in which transport security or its components are included in the main direct object; and regulatory crimes in which transport security or its components are included in an additional direct object (mandatory or optional). The article substantiates the allocation of "related" crimes that indirectly affect transport security. Keywords: transport security, criminal liability, crime, object of crime, vehicles, transport infrastructure.

Judicious Imprisonment: Does Current Sentencing for Non-Violent Offenses Promote Political Legitimacy?

Starting August 21, 2018, Americans incarcerated across the United States have been striking back — non-violently. Inmates with jobs are protesting slave-like wages through worker strikes and sit-ins. Inmates also call for an end to racial disparities and an increase in rehabilitation programs. Even more surprisingly, many inmates have begun hunger strikes. Inmates are protesting the numerous ills of prisons: overcrowding, inadequate health care, abysmal mental health care contributing to inmate suicide, violence, disenfranchisement of inmates, and more. While recent reforms have slightly decreased mass incarceration, the current White House administration could likely reverse this trend. President Donald Trump’s and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s statements and policies that call for increased mandatory sentences, cracking down on illegal immigrants, and aggressively enforcing drug laws might be the iron fist that breaks the back of an already collapsing criminal justice system. Many, including judges currently sitting on the bench, believe that numerous unjust laws and their unjust penalties have brought the United States penal system to this breaking point. To those Americans outside of prison that think they will never be jailed, Tenth Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski warns them, “You’re (probably) a federal criminal.” Due to the proliferation of criminal laws, the criminal “justice” system subjects virtually all Americans to the possibility of imprisonment for conduct that does not even come close to meriting imprisonment. Amid this chaos, a deep and fundamental question brews: Can the state justifiably coerce an individual to comply with its unjust laws? Even if the penalties for breaking unjust laws are life in prison or death? If not, then society’s stability is threatened. This article negotiates a middle position. The government is justified in enforcing unjust laws only if these laws are democratically enacted and are almost-just. How much almost-just is depends on the kind of law at issue. Thus, lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges need to carefully distinguish crimes that directly affect only oneself, crimes that are violent, crimes that are primarily monetary-based, regulatory crimes, and others. To implement reforms, this article proposes new affirmative defenses for crimes, enhanced prosecutorial discretion, and more robust judicial review as viable mechanisms to invalidate laws and penalties that are not almost-just.

Discretionary prosecution of regulatory crimes: disproportionate emphasis and consequences to other serious crimes

Prosecutors pay closer attention to cases related to regulatory policies that are emphasized by the political community. Discrepancy in the prosecution efforts between ‘regulatory crimes’ and ‘conventional crimes’ has widened significantly in Korea over the past 40 years. Considering both the low prosecuting preference for, and the rapid increases in, violent, property, and sexual crimes, we investigate the different spillover effects to the incidence of these serious sub-categories of conventional crimes due to the ‘disproportionate’ focus on regulatory crimes. The spillovers stem from the resource constraints and the economic incentives of enforcers and criminals. In this paper, it is found that the spillover was the greatest in sexual crimes and violent crimes, both of which are conceived to be most harmful to society. Therefore, the opportunity cost of the politically-motivated prosecuting focus has also been borne in a ‘disproportionate’ fashion. We also discover that, in pursuing the prosecuting emphasis on regulatory crimes under resource constraints, prosecutors have also discretionarily increased the use of ‘summary prosecution’ for other crimes, since it is a less expensive instrument for prosecutors.

Are Migratory Birds Extending Environmental Criminal Liability

Environmental statutes frequently include criminal provisions as a means of enforcing their regulations. However, these provisions often include little if no mens rea requirement. As with any form of criminal liability that approaches strict liability, courts must therefore somehow insure that convictions satisfy constitutional due process concerns. During the last century, and accompanying the rise of regulatory statutes, the court developed the public welfare doctrine as a method of justifying the lack of a mens rea requirement for certain types of crimes. These crimes, known as public welfare offenses, involve regulations so potentially dangerous to public health and safety that the court was willing to presume that the allegedly criminal actor had knowledge of his wrong doing, thus satisfying due process. United States v. Apollo Energies, Inc.’s, interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, demonstrates another justification for a lack of a mens rea requirement. However, for a criminal offense that did not fall under the coverage of the public welfare doctrine: an offense that does not affect the public health, and which features a causation element. To satisfy due process, the Tenth Circuit borrows several elements embedded in the public welfare doctrine: foreseeability of regulation and foreseeability of harm. The use of these elements, and the Tenth Circuit’s willingness to apply them outside of the public welfare setting, illuminates when courts might find liability for future environmental regulatory crimes.

The Publicity of Law and the Regulatory State

Theorists usually agree that the rule of law requires that the law be public, that is, available so that those whose conduct it governs may discover what it requires of them. In the regulatory state, however, every regulation is likely to be lost in a mountain of other regulations. This would not violate the publicity condition if regulated conduct invariably carries telltale signs that it is likely to be subject to legal requirements ­ but in a technological society even this weaker condition may not be met, because a great deal of seemingly-innocuous conduct may be regulated. The present paper examines the publicity problem raised by regulation in a technological society. It does so by examining the U.S. Supreme Court's mens rea jurisprudence for regulatory crimes, on the question of whether knowledge that one is violating a regulation is an element of the offense. The chief cases are Balint, Freed, United States Minerals, Liparota, Staples, Ratzlaf, and Cheek, along with the 9th Circuit's Weitzenhof decision. As I analyze them, the first four of these cases set out a theory of publicity, according to which knowledge that one is violating a regulation need not be proven if the conduct signals its own regulability. Selling narcotics, possessing hand grenades, and shipping sulfuric acid are all the sort of thing that one should anticipate are regulable (thus Balint, Freed, and United States Minerals); trafficking in food stamps is not (thus Liparota). However, in Staples the Supreme Court held that possessing a machine gun is not signaling behavior, because so many Americans regard gun ownership as innocent activity. Similarly, Ratzlaf remarks that structuring financial transactions to evade federal reporting requirements can be innocent behavior, apparently because so many Americans regard regulatory dodging as a legitimate pastime. These decisions pose a complication for the signaling theory: Our intuitions about what sort of conduct is intrinsically regulable are affected by the expectations of those around us. Thus, the phenomenon of social cognition creates the possibility of a cultural excuse for regulatory crime. Furthermore, it seems clear that many defendants do not recognize the non-innocence of their behavior because (like the tax resister Cheek) they do not want to recognize it in which case the cultural excuse becomes more like a cultural veto, by which those who dislike a regulation may nullify it (at least once). The paper canvasses several possible solutions to this difficulty, concluding that the needs of legitimate regulation outweigh the requirement of publicity.

Counting Cases About Milk, Our “Most Nearly Perfect” Food, 1860-1940

At the turn of the 20th century, as more people in the United States started moving to urban areas, the quality of the milk supply became one of the preeminent public health challenges of the day and a centerpiece of the Progressive agenda. Governments passed ordinances and statutes to safeguard the milk supply and sanctioned violators of these laws. This study collects the published cases where judges were asked to enforce these health regulations.Contrary to the Revisionist reading of Progressive Era constitutional history, these cases demonstrate that enforcement of these health laws became more difficult during the Progressive Era. Parties resisting these laws made broader constitutional challenges to the laws more often. While the number of victories for these parties remained steady, the scope of their victories became broader. The study also throws light on the early use of “regulatory crimes.” Governments were more likely throughout the study period to use a criminal rather than a civil enforcement process. Surprisingly, the use of criminal enforcement did not affect the government's success rate in these cases.

Counting Cases About Milk, Our 'Most Nearly Perfect Food,' 1860-1940

In this paper, we study outcomes in a large group of appellate decisions to throw light on the enforcement of health regulations before and during the Progressive Era. We draw inferences about the use of criminal versus civil sanctions in the early days of the white collar crime era, and about the willingness of judges to enforce health legislation. At the turn of the twentieth century, as more people in the United States started moving to urban areas, the quality of the milk supply became one of the preeminent public health challenges of the day, and a centerpiece of the Progressive agenda. Governments passed ordinances and statutes to safeguard the milk supply, and sanctioned violators of these laws. This study collects the published cases where judges were asked to enforce these health regulations. Contrary to the Revisionist reading of Progressive Era constitutional history, these cases demonstrate that enforcement of these health laws became more difficult during the Progressive Era. Parties resisting these laws made broader constitutional challenges to the laws more often. While the number of victories for these parties remained steady, the scope of their victories became broader. The study also explores the early use of regulatory crimes. Governments were more likely throughout the study period to use a criminal rather than a civil enforcement process. Surprisingly, the use of criminal enforcement did not affect the government's success rate in these cases.

Regulatory crimes and the charter:R. v. Wholesale Travel Inc.

Regulatory crimes and the charter:R. v. Wholesale Travel Inc.