a. Gender equality and crime: Domestic Violence
and Stalking Behavior.
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 behaviors 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
behavior 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 behavior 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 behavior 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.