Meaningful and Effective? Considering Victims’ Interests Through Participation at the International Criminal Court

This article explores the role of victims in the criminal proceedings of the International Criminal Court and the extent to which their interests have impacted upon the ICC judges’ decision making in light of human rights law and victimological theorisation. The article begins by first outlining how victims’ interests can be considered in international criminal proceedings, before contrasting this role with the purpose of international criminal justice. The second part of the article examines victim participation within the ICC and how this has affected judicial decision making to assess its effectiveness. The contest between the rights of victims and the role of Prosecutor in determining the selection of charges and perpetrators is also examined in an effort to add to the current debate on victim participation at the ICC. The author finds that at the ICC, despite innovative victim provisions, victims’ interests have little impact on outcomes of the Court. The author argues that in order to ensure the Court is more responsive to victims understanding of justice it should give greater weight to their interests, which in turn is likely to improve their satisfaction with the ICC, as well as public confidence and legitimacy of the work of the Court.

Criminal Justice in Transition: The Northern Ireland Context

This book represents a critical examination of key aspects of crime and criminal justice in Northern Ireland which will have resonance elsewhere. It considers the core aspects of criminal justice policymaking in Northern Ireland which are central to the process of post-conflict transition, including reform of policing, judicial decision-making and correctional services such as probation and prisons. It examines contemporary trends in criminal justice in Northern Ireland as related to various dimensions of crime relating to female offenders, young offenders, sexual and violent offenders, race and criminal justice, community safety and restorative justice. The book also considers the extent to which crime and criminal justice issues in Northern Ireland are being affected by the broader processes of ‘policy transfer’, globalisation and transnationalism and the extent to which criminal justice in Northern Ireland is divergent from the other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom. Written by leading international authorities in the field, the book offers a snapshot of the cutting edge of critical thinking in criminal justice practice and transitional justice contexts.

Exploring the Influence of Reporting Delay on Criminal Justice Outcomes: Comparing Child and Adult Reporters of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Delay between disclosure and reporting child sexual abuse is common and has significant implications for the prosecution of such offenses. While we might expect the relationship to be a linear one with longer delay reducing the likelihood of prosecution, the present study confirms a more complex interaction. Utilizing data from 2,079 police records in Northern Ireland, the study investigated the impact of reporting delay on pretrial criminal justice outcomes for child and adult reporters of child sexual abuse. While teenagers were found to be the group most disadvantaged by reporting delay, increased delay actually appeared advantageous for some groups, notably adult females reporting offenses that occurred when they were 0 to 6 years old. Conversely, adult males reporting child sexual abuse did not appear to benefit from increased delay, suggesting both an adult and gender bias within decision-making processes. The implications for future research are discussed. 

Community Sanctions and Measures

This chapter explores the use of community sanctions in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. It locates this discussion within a wider international landscape, where the numbers of people subject to supervision in the community has risen markedly. It explores some of the reasons for this growth alongside the rationalities that are deployed to promote the use of community sanctions over time. The differing trajectories of the two jurisdictions in respect of the evolution and use of community sanctions are explored, as are some of the factors that explain areas of divergence and commonality. The chapter concludes by critically considering penal reductionism as a point of policy convergence in the two jurisdictions.

Young People’s Offending Careers and Criminal Justice Contact: A Case for Social Justice

This article draws on an analysis of young people’s offending careers. The research was initiated against a backdrop of changing discourse around youth justice in Ireland with a shift towards prevention of offending and diversion from the criminal justice system. Locating crime and criminal justice contact within a biographical context indicated that participants’ offending, and lives generally, was bound up in marginalized transitions to adulthood, and embedded within social and economic environments characterized by high deprivation. The findings support a further shift in focus towards addressing social injustice as a necessary prerequisite to tackle the origins of youth offending.

Match-fixing and Money-laundering

his essay is premised on the following: a conspiracy to fix or otherwise manipulate the outcome of a sporting event for profitable purpose. That conspiracy is in turn predicated on the conspirators’ capacity to: (a) ensure that the fix takes place as pre-determined; (b) manipulate the betting markets that surround the sporting event in question; and (c) collect their winnings undetected by either the betting industry’s security systems or the attention of any national regulatory body or law enforcement agency.

Unlike many essays on this topic, this contribution does not focus on the “fix”– part (a) of the above equation. It does not seek to explain how or why a participant or sports official might facilitate a betting scam through either on-field behaviour that manipulates the outcome of a game or by presenting others with privileged inside information in advance of a game. Neither does this contribution seek to give any real insight into the second part of the above equation: how such conspirators manipulate a sports betting market by playing or laying the handicap or in-play or other offered betting odds. In fact, this contribution is not really about the mechanics of sports betting or match fixing at all; rather it is about the sometimes under explained reason why match fixing has reportedly become increasingly attractive as of late to international crime syndicates. That reason relates to the fact that given the traditional liquidity of gambling markets, sports betting can, and has long been, an attractively accessible conduit for criminal syndicates to launder the proceeds of crime. Accordingly, the term “winnings”, noted in part (c) of the above equation, takes on an altogether more nefarious meaning.

This essay’s attempt to review the possible links between match fixing in sport, gambling-related “winnings” and money laundering is presented in four parts.

First, some context will be given to what is meant by money laundering, how it is currently policed internationally and, most importantly, how the growth of online gambling presents a unique set of vulnerabilities and opportunities to launder the proceeds of crime. The globalisation of organised crime, sports betting and transnational financial services now means that money laundering opportunities have moved well beyond a flutter on the horses at your local racetrack or at the roulette table of your nearest casino. The growth of online gambling platforms means that at a click it is possible for the proceeds of crime in one jurisdiction to be placed on a betting market in another jurisdiction with the winnings drawn down and laundered in a third jurisdiction and thus the internationalisation of gambling-related money laundering threatens the integrity of sport globally.

Second, and referring back to the infamous hearings of the US Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organised Crime in Interstate Commerce of the early 1950s, (“the Kefauver Committee”), this article will begin by illustrating the long standing interest of organised crime gangs – in this instance, various Mafia families in the United States – in money laundering via sports gambling-related means.

Third, and using the seminal 2009 report “Money Laundering through the Football Sector” by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF, an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system), this essay seeks to assess the vulnerabilities of international sport to match fixing, as motivated in part by the associated secondary criminality of tax evasion and transnational economic crime.

The fourth and concluding parts of the essay spin from problems to possible solutions. The underlying premise here is that heretofore there has been an insularity to the way that sports organisations have both conceptualised and sought to address the match fixing threat e.g., if we (in sport) initiate player education programmes; establish integrity units; enforce codes of conduct and sanctions strictly; then our integrity or brand should be protected. This essay argues that, although these initiatives are important, the source and process of match fixing is beyond sport’s current capacity, as are the possible solutions.

Criminal Justice Reforms in Northern Ireland: The Agents of Change

This chapter examines who and what brought about the transformation in the criminal justice system of Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2015, seeking to pinpoint the critical moments which stimulated the reforms, how they were delivered, and through what processes they are now being maintained. It seeks to identify the key agents of change and considers whether it is possible to generalise from Northern Ireland’s experience so that other conflicted societies might benefit from the lessons learned.

Beyond Criminal Justice: An anthology of abolitionist papers presented to conferences of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control over the past decade

Beyond Criminal Justice presents a vision of a future without brutal, authoritarian and repressive penal regimes. Many of the papers brought together here have been unavailable for more than two decades. Their republication indicates not only their continuing theoretical importance to abolitionist studies but also how they provide important insights into the nature and legitimacy of criminal processes in the here and now. Contributors highlight the human consequences of the harms of imprisonment, evidencing the hurt, injury and damage of penal incarceration across a number of different countries in Europe. Focusing on penal power and prisoner contestation to such power, the moral and political crises of imprisonment are laid bare. The contributors to Beyond Criminal Justice explore the urgent need for a coherent, rational and morally and politically sophisticated theoretical basis for penal abolitionism. Advocating a utopian imagination and at the same time practical solutions already implemented in countries around Europe - alongside grappling with controversial debates such as abolitionist responses to rape and sexual violence - the book steps outside of common sense assumptions regarding 'crime', punishment and 'criminal justice'. Beyond Criminal Justice will be of interest to students of criminology, zemiology, sociology, penology and critical legal studies as well as anyone interested in rethinking the problem of 'crime' and challenging the logic of the penal rationale.