Legislation and Unintended Consequences for Crime

Abstract

A literature review undertaken for the EU Crime Proofing Steering Group identified a set of legislative crime risk indicators. These are intended to assist in scanning summaries of new legislative proposals to identify regulation that might contribute to fraud, corruption, illegal trade, or environmental crime. The case studies reviewed suggest that any regulation carries the risk of such unintended crime consequences, which: (1) introduces product disposal requirements or any other new or more burdensome fee or obligation; (2) introduces a concession on a tax, or a concession on any other fee or obligation; (3) introduces a grant, subsidy, or compensation scheme; (4) introduces or increases the tax on legal goods, or in any other way increases the costs of legal goods; (5) prohibits or restricts a demanded product or service, or in any other way decreases the availability of demanded goods and services; (6) introduces or removes a law enforcement capacity, increases or decreases funding for enforcement activity or in any other way impacts the intensity of law enforcement activity; and (7) provides officials with regulatory power.

CITES, wild plants, and opportunities for crime

“…It showed how a regulation, and its implementation, governing a legitimate market can have vulnerabilities and consequently create unintended criminal opportunities, consistent with previous research (Morgan and Clarke 2006;Transcrime 2006). Our results suggest that CPL remains a valid tool to assist the assessment of regulatory frameworks, and proves to be useful well beyond criminological and legal studies (in our case, conservation science) to guide an expert-led identification of unintended criminogenic factors.…”

“…Guided by the indicators suggested in the MARC model (see Transcrime 2006 for further details) and inspired by the analysis carried out by Morgan and Clarke (2006) to identify risky indicators for new legislative proposals, we systematically analysed CITES documents to make explicit the relationship between specific CITES provisions and criminogenic mechanisms leading to unintended consequences.…”

Understanding the Impacts of Transboundary Waste Shipment Policies: The Case of Plastic and Electronic Waste

“…While assessing the 'effectiveness', impact assessments should measure the effect, including intended as well as unintended changes resulting directly or indirectly from a policy intervention. So-called 'risk indicators' have been proposed to assist in identifying potential unintended consequences for new legislation [48]. Such risks should be considered early in the policy formulation.…”

“…Such risks should be considered early in the policy formulation. Examples of unintended impacts from the case studies used by Morgan and Clarke [48] corresponding to the risk indicator 'introducing fees or obligations' are presented in Table A4 in Appendix B. Although it is important to anticipate possible unintended consequences of any policy intervention, failure to do so is not necessarily a reason for the consequences, as regulations are often complex and it is not always possible to foresee such consequences upfront.…”

Corruptio Legis: Law as a Cause of Systemic Corruption Comparative Perspectives and Remedies also for the Post-Brexit Commonwealth

“…Only in the last fifteen years, scholars have started exploring the issue and the possible techniques to "crime proof" legislation. Apart from few exceptions [5], these studies, however, are mostly limited to European countries [6] and to EU law [7] and, after quite a considerable initial drive, which also led to experiment some crime proofing mechanism within EU legislative processes, they do not seem to have been developed or expanded any further. It is especially surprising that the promising suggestions and outcomes of such research have not been applied more extensively to the specific area of corruption crimes and to the context of regions where corruption is more widespread.…”