Legal Responsibility, Criminal Culpability and Group Membership

The need to deepen our understanding of the bases for, and mechanisms of, the appropriate attribution of moral responsibility and legal culpability of groups is especially relevant given the recent developments in the law of association in relation to membership of ‘extremist’ groups in terrorist cases; as well as cases of gang/group violence, notably in relation to the recent spate of knife and gun crimes in many inner cities. This book examines the ontological nature of criminal groups and issues of legal responsibility and culpability. While the distinction between ‘criminal’ groups (professional bank robbers, for example), with their loose bonds but tight sense of intentionality, from criminogenic groups (e.g. youth in street gangs), with their tight bonds and loose sense of intentionality is known in criminological theory, and formally in law, it has been largely unexamined in terms of the ontological aspects of ‘belonging’ to a group. The study also explores the complex combination of legal and social factors that has underscored the inadequacy of criminal law in relation to corporate offenders. In law companies have been identified as individuals, save in cases of strict liability and typically criminal law does not recognise the corporate form in attributing blame when dealing with responsibility. The book examines the theoretical language used in relation to corporate offenders by drawing on an emerging focus on ontology in socio-legal studies