Reexamining the Role of Incarceration and Stigma in Criminal Law

One of the ways by which the legal system has responded to different sets of problems, specifically to acts of negligence that has resulted in greater disastrous consequences to society due to the changing physical, economic, and institutional relationships is the blurring of the traditional scope and boundaries of criminal law, especially with respect to tort. The blurring of criminal law's boundaries means the trend seen in criminal law which now shares properties that were traditionally exclusive to it, both procedural and substantive. This includes the criminalization of acts that were formerly merely tortious or governed by regulation or administrative law (Bowles, Faure and Garoupa, 2008; Luna 2005); the use of civil procedures to pursue the objectives of criminal law1; the relaxation of mens rea in criminal law as seen in the case of corporate crime; and, in common law countries, the use of punitive sanctions outside criminal law (Mann, 1992).