a. Gender equality and
crime: Domestic Violence and Stalking Behaviour.
While the literature on domestic violence has long delved into both
physical and non physical spousal and partner abuse, in most North American
jurisdictions criminal law dealing with spouses and partners living together
has traditionally focused mainly on physical –including sexual- violence. Many
North American jurisdictions still do not criminalize harassment, control, and
isolation tactics that take place while partners cohabitate. These behaviours
are nonetheless criminalized the moment the victims –generally female- leave
their abusive partners. This research project analyzes the existing and
potentially desirable criminal justice responses to non physical or sexual
domestic violence in the states of California, New York, Florida, and in
Canada. The project focuses particularly on domestic violence stalking. The
domestic violence stalkers, a category borrowed from Criminology literature,
resort to a series of conducts to abuse their partners, which differ from those
employed by these abusers once their relationship is terminated –known as
simple obsession stalkers. Criminal laws do not specifically protect victims
–particularly female- from the abuse of this class of stalkers in Canada or in
the United States. This project is inserted within a larger debate about the
role of the criminal justice system in domestic violence.
b. Money Laundering
Money laundering involves using the proceeds of a crime in innumerable
transactions until law enforcement and regulatory agencies are unable to trace
the origin of the money. The money laundering crime was created in the 1980’s
in order to repress drug trafficking and later corruption of foreign
politicians. After September 11, 2001, it became one of the preferred security
strategies to combat the financing of terrorism activities. This research
project aims at examining the money laundering crime and its adverse
consequences on international business. The emphasis of the research project is
on the US influence in shaping the Canadian, European, and Latin American criminal
justice responses to money laundering problems, particularly after the
September 11 incidents.
c. Crimes in Space: A
criminology approach to criminal acts and deviant behaviour in the
International Space Station
The International Space Station is one of the most ambitious and
transcendental projects of humanity. It will permit the cohabitation of human
beings of a mosaic of nationalities and backgrounds in a football-field size
platform at several hundred miles from earth in outer space. The International
Space Station by its very nature is bound to reproduce conflicts of human
behaviour in outer space. Due to the isolation conditions and the hostile
environment, it is expected that these conflicts will have a high rate of
occurrence as has been corroborated in recent multi-culturally diverse
experiences in outer space. All these conflicts will have enormous criminal
implications.
This research project aims at analyzing the most significant
criminological theories to see which one –if any- may be applicable to criminal
and deviant behaviour in outer space. The guiding hypothesis is that the unique
characteristics of the space environment, together with the exceptional social
factors of all involved actors, demand new and specific theories to explain criminal
and deviant behaviour in the International Space Station. This research project
has already resulted in the publication of three articles on different
criminological aspects of criminality in outer space.