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Purpose This paper shows how a small jurisdiction can apply well-designed non-conviction-based (NCB) forfeiture provisions with a dedicated team to have a meaningful impact on financial crime. This paper aims to examine developing jurisprudence, legislation and case law to explore how the NCB laws work. Finally, this paper examines a relatively new area of law for Canada, unexplained wealth orders (UWOs). This paper discussed three recent cases in Western Canada currently before the courts. Design/methodology/approach This paper considers legislative and jurisprudential developments relevant to NCB or civil asset forfeiture and in particular considers very recent developments involving UWOs. Findings This paper shows how a small jurisdiction can apply well-designed NCB forfeiture provisions with a dedicated team to have a meaningful impact on financial crime. Research limitations/implications Some jurisdictions, like the UK, have experienced court losses with their UWO process. Canadian law may have a modest pathway to success in this area, although our jurisprudence is very much in development. Practical implications Manitoba is a small jurisdiction with limited resources who are finding ways to have an effective impact on financial crime through the careful application of use of conviction-based forfeiture. Social implications Financial crime has an outsized impact on society. This paper shows some of the techniques available to disrupt financial crime. Originality/value This paper incorporates developments in 2024 that have not yet been examined.

Punishment is notoriously difficult to justify because it involves visiting hard treatment upon those who are punished. The rights forfeiture theory of punishment contends that punishment is justified when and because the criminal has forfeited her right not to be subjected to this hard treatment. Because of a number of apparently devastating objections, this account has very few advocates. In this essay I aim to rehabilitate the rights forfeiture account by offering responses to the standard criticisms.

The Asset Recovery Handbook is a practical tool to help policymakers, public officials, and those who have been entrusted with recovering stolen assets by informing them on how to pursue proceeds of corruption and navigate the challenges of international asset recovery.

We exploit local deficits and state-level differences in police revenue retention from civil asset forfeitures to estimate how incentives to raise revenue influence policing. In a national sample, we find that local fine and forfeiture revenue increases faster with drug arrests than arrests for violent crimes. Revenues also increase faster with arrests of blacks and Hispanics than with whites’ drug arrests. Concomitant with higher rates of revenue generation, we find that arrests of blacks and Hispanics for drugs, driving under the influence, and prostitution, and associated property seizures, increase with local deficits when institutions allow officials to more easily retain revenues from forfeited property. Whites’ drug and driving under the influence arrests are insensitive to these institutions. We do, however, observe comparable increases in whites’ prostitution arrests. Our results show that revenue-driven law enforcement can distort police behavior and decision-making, altering the quantity, type, and racial composition of arrests.

This article postulates a two-step hybrid approach in the control of remedial clauses—eg, liquidated damages, forfeiture clauses, deposits, accelerated performance clauses, etc. It restates the imperatives for rethinking the strict enforcement of such terms. The currently prevailing strict approach is premised on the view that conditions prevailing at the time of contracting should shape the enforcement of such provisions. In place of that approach, it is proposed that the award and control of pre-determined remedies be parallel to the default common law rules that govern the judicial exercise for determining damages/compensation. In essence, this article argues for the reinstatement of a ‘just compensation’ standard in the control of such terms; notably, one that takes account of hindsight knowledge or information.

Fines are ubiquitous in modern society, and they are imposed for both serious crimes and minor civil wrongs. The U.S. Supreme Court recently recognized that the Constitution's Excessive Fines Clause applies to the states, but that decision raises previously unexplored questions as to how to enforce the Clause's protections in the states. A key question is what role, if any, federalism should play in crafting doctrinal rules that apply the Clause's protections to state and local fines and related property forfeitures. This Article is the first to accord in-depth treatment to that important question. The extent to which federalism principles should apply does not have an immediate and obvious answer. On the one hand, federalism plays a significant role in the Court's jurisprudence on the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. The Court therefore generally takes a highly deferential approach in reviewing sentences of imprisonment. Lower courts have applied that same deferential review in the context of the Excessive Fines Clause. On the other hand, fines and forfeitures are unlike other forms of punishment-such as prison-because they are often used as a revenue source for state and local governments, creating a conflict of interest for state and local decision-making bodies. To address this conundrum, this Article makes the novel argument that the Court should look to the exactions doctrine under the Takings Clause, which often implicates similar concerns of government self-interest and overreaching. Exactions and excessive fines are conceptually similar, but scholars thus far have overlooked the close relationship between them. The exactions doctrine gives minimal weight to federalism concerns, and it applies a heightened-scrutiny standard that is well suited to the excessive fines context. Indeed, differences between federal practice and state and local practices as to fines suggest that state and local discretionary fines should be subject to closer constitutional scrutiny than federal fines. As a recent example illustrates, such heightened scrutiny would ensure that the Excessive Fines Clause is not merely a parchment barrier, while still accounting for variations between states and localities in terms of their communities' values and needs.

Skepticism about blameworthiness says that there is good reason to doubt that, in our world, humans are ever blameworthy for their deeds. A significant problem for the discussion of this view is that it is unclear how to understand the kind of blame that should be at issue. This paper makes a new proposal. The basic idea is that the kind of blame skeptics should be skeptical about is constituted by responses that can violate the targets’ claims and by the responders’ thought that the targets have forfeited this claim because of their morally objectionable actions and because of how they were when they performed them. This view identifies an important part of our everyday lives and frames discussions about skepticism about blameworthiness in a new way.