This book provides the first in-depth scholarly analysis of fraud, the highest volume crime in England and Wales, addressing the challenges faced in building a principled criminal law response by presenting an innovative normative analysis. The UK is now in a pandemic of fraud. There were 4.6 million fraud offences recorded in the year ending March 2021, accounting for 42% of all crime committed against individuals. Fraud is now the highest volume crime in England and Wales; its incidence in the first half of 2021 was described by UK Finance as a ''national security threat''. The book provides the answers to key questions, such as: - How can the rapidly changing nature of fraud be understood and mapped by criminal lawyers? - How does fraud connect to economic crime more broadly? - Is the current landscape for criminalising fraud fit for purpose, in the light of changes to the nature and complexity of wrongdoing? - What are the principled limits to using Artificial Intelligence technologies to detect and to penalise fraud? - Which principles should inform fraud criminalisation and governance following the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet the challenges of a digital age and a stretched criminal justice system?

Autorentext
Jennifer Collins is Associate Professor in Law at the University of Bristol, UK.

Inhalt

1. A Fraud Pandemic
2. The Meanings of 'Fraud'
3. The Changing Nature of Fraud
4. Theorising the Criminalisation of Fraud in England and Wales
5. Fraud in the Real World: Governing Fraud
6. Fraud's New Directions: The Ambivalence of AI
7. Epilogue: Fraud and the Limits of the Criminal Law