http://www.ourtimebd.

com/beta/2019/05/21/group-family-liability-of-crime-accused/
Group & family liability of crime accused
Published Time: May 21, 2019, 12:01 am
Updated Time: May 20, 2019 at 9:45 pm

M S Siddiqui writes for DOT

The cumbersome trial system, wastage of time and insecurity and poor law order
situation prompted the citizen to avoid submission as witness. The moral of citizen
may be also questionable. The lack of witness paves the ways to go back to society
from the court with clean hands. Citizens are hardly interested to go to Court to
deliver statement as witness of any offence or crime. There are some professional
witnesses available in the society on payment to give false testimony.
Crimes of terrorism are not committed by individuals acting in isolation, without
regard to other possible accomplish. An act of terrorism, the nature, the goal and
the magnitude of terror crimes make terrorism more like corporate crime and
organized crime than individual crime although individual may independently
carry out any act. Families of terrorist members may directly or indirectly support
terrorist activities, concealing the whereabouts of the members or providing
practical or financial assistance. In the context of terrorist organizations, the crime
results from the concerted or interdependent action of various actors committing it.
There are many stories and nobles mostly of period of British rule, describing the
arrest of family members for allegation of one member although this is not valid in
the eye of law. Individual offender bears the full burden of the sanction.
The global criminal and terrorism experts are concerned of the methods and
financial support of crimes and offences. The network is now global due to open
market and excess to information technology. The focuses are on global partners of
crime and terrorism.
The anti-terrorism and Anti-money laundering law promulgated by most of the
nations and global co-operation is part of the anti-terrorism movements and these
are very expensive for the mankind.
Again family and groups of individual suspects are on focal point. There is hardly
any distinction between toleration, support and sponsorship becomes relevant in
the context of legal policies of communal liability. Historically, groups and clans
were liable for the wrongs committed by group members and this ensured effective
internal monitoring of the troublemakers within the group. In ancient societies,
rules of communal responsibility permitted the imposition of sanctions – both
physical and pecuniary on a wrongdoer’s clan.
The rule of communal liability were an effective instrument for restoring law and
order, in an environment characterized by limited access to information outside the
group and underdeveloped discovery systems. These societies were characterized
by a substantial lack of privacy and this facilitated the opportunities for cross-
monitoring members within the group. The characteristics of strict and communal
liability for injuries, and collective guilt, fundamentally derive from the high
information costs of ancient society.
There are many methods to prevent terrorism. The criminal incapacitation is better
rather than deterrence. Efficient incapacitation is achieved by eliminating
opportunities for terrorism at minimum cost for society. One possibility is simply
to eliminate the physical ability to commit offenses by imprisonment or by
imposing the death penalty. Another possibility is to reduce assets made available
to terrorism by cutting terrorists off from their funds.
Honor, pride and family status limit the persuasive power that individual
punishment will have on a potential terrorist and financial penalties are unlikely to
play any substantive role with respect to individual terrorists, but may play a larger
role regarding fund-supporting organizations. A Large financial liability of groups
and families that provide support, or could have prevented the commission of a
terrorist act serves this purpose.
There are two different rationales for group liability. The first is based on the idea
that terrorism has a “constituency” that benefits from terrorist acts. The group
liability would target the constituency who benefits from the terrorist act. This is
similar to the foundation of vicarious liability of the principal for the acts of the
agent. This form of “communal liability” might prove more effective than
individual criminal liability of those who are directly involved in the terrorist
activity.
Within this framework of group-wide liability, family or group members of a
terrorist become quasi-enforcers. Since groups and families are held strictly liable
for their members’ actions.
This is a rationale that focuses on the wrongdoers’ external benefits. The second
rationale instead focuses on the identification of superior enforcers. Liability is
imposed on the wrongdoer’s group not because the group benefits from the
terrorist acts, but because the group can monitor and prevent terrorist acts more
effectively. This theory based on famous legal economist Gary Becker’s analysis,
supposes that spreading liability to the members of the group or family
infrastructure will provide some level of internal monitoring, and eventually ex
post sanctions on members of the group that occasion the imposition of financial
liability on the group as a whole.
The most obvious case of liabilities should be spread over on active supporters of
terrorism, and also the less obvious case of liability for those who benefit indirectly
from terrorism or are passive supporters of terrorism. The recent observation of
International War Crime Tribunal during Judgments in Crime against humanity
during liberation war has similar views on political party of offenders.
Group responsibility is delegation of responsibility of monitoring and controlling
potential offender by the family. It lowers the cost of enforcement to the
government, but it increases the monitoring costs to such local groups. In doing so,
the government must make sure the group has the appropriate incentives to
monitor and eventually penalize its members for engaging in criminal activities
that lead to liability for the group.
It will deter those harmful activities that are easily observable but will induce
active terrorists to engage relatively more in those harmful activities that are hardly
observable and controllable by their families and group members.
We may consider the economic model of group liability for individual, family and
party for certain offences and terrorism in the context of internal and global
scenario.
Writers is a Legal Economist
e-mail: mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com