Chalmers, James and Fiona Leverick. "Quantifying Criminalization". In Criminalization: The Political Morality of the Criminal Law, edited by R. A. Duff, et al., 54-79, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Chalmers, James and Fiona Leverick. "Quantifying Criminalization". In Criminalization: The Political Morality of the Criminal Law, edited by R. A. Duff, et al., 54-79, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

• Criminalization has many definitions, the most of which is the positivist proposal that any act which can be prosecuted in criminal court is a crime. The authors instead prefer the approach of Dr. Nicola Lacey in distinguishing between formal criminalization, the legal definition, and substantive criminalization, which acts are actually treated as crimes (54).
• Although formal and substantive criminalization are usually related and overlapping categories, they are not necessarily so. Often law enforcement agencies do not fully enforce formal criminalization. Moreover, this relationship is in flux, as law enforcement agencies change tactics in response to societal pressures (56).
• While recognizing the importance of the division between formal and substantive criminalization, the authors will mainly use resources of formal criminalization in their study because it is much easier to measure (56).
• A number of studies examining the total number of criminal offenses in the UK have come up with radically different answers and most do not include local laws or acts considered crimes through common law rulings. This goes to show just how little criminologists know about what constitutes a crime in the UK (59).
• Moreover, the numbers of total offense tell us very little about the actual range of activities criminalized in the UK, although they do make the calculation more confusing. A reduction in the number of criminal acts through conglomerating offenses might actually end up increasing the range of actions considered criminal (60).
• In the UK, oftentimes people sit within the intersection of multiple legal jurisdictions, whose criminal codes replicate the same prohibitions. This results in a danger of over-counting criminalization, as acts may be separately prohibited by EU law, British law, and developed Welsh or Scots law (65-66).
• The majority of new offenses created in the period studied were the result of regional and national government trying to bring its criminal laws into accordance with international legal obligations. Conformity to EU law accounted for the majority of new laws, with other international obligations also being significant (68).
• The influence of the EU on the criminalization of certain acts in the UK is limited to specific sectors, with the vast majority of newly criminalized activities taking the place of regulations regarding agriculture, the environment, workplace safety, and hygiene standards (69).
• " We should not be too quick to dismiss these offences as purely ‘regulatory’ in nature. Any conviction for a criminal offence is a serious matter, no matter how ‘regulatory’ it might seem, and many so-called ‘regulatory’ offences actually criminalize significantly harmful (or potentially harmful) conduct" (70).
• Many of the new acts criminalized in the UK only apply to specialized persons in a very particular range of conduct, crimes which the vast majority of the population is not in the position to commit. Very few new laws criminalize acts which might be performed by the general public (73-75).
• The authors raise concern at the number of serious offenses created in the UK with long terms of imprisonment as punishment, despite their limited applicability to the general public. They suggest that perhaps criminal law is not suitable for such offenses, and suggest a system of administrative law similar to German or Spanish models (77).
• The authors also raise concerns that the vast number of criminal laws in the UK and their relative obscurity may violate the basic legal principle of fair notice, which demands that criminals be aware of the criminal nature of their acts. While specific professions may be expected to learn relevant regulations, the sheer number of laws raises doubt about the feasibility of this expectation (77-78).
• "What cannot be doubted is that the relative inaccessibility and incoherence of much criminal law can lead easily to injustice" (79).