An examination of how the methods employed by the Criminal Assets Bureau move Ireland in a new direction of crime control

This work examines how the concept and operational outcomes achieved by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) reflect a new model of crime control that has emerged and developed to a stage where it is a significant contributor to crime control in Ireland. The approach developed and implemented by CAB is not designed to produce a socially engineered solution to make the deviant better by correctionalist intervention and normalisation. Rather it is an actuarial approach to criminal wrongdoing, one which employs civil, administrative and regulatory mechanisms. The instruments employed by CAB attempt to permanently alter the criminogenic networks that exist around the individual and thereby neutralise the criminal threat. Following a doctrinal and socio-legal methodology this thesis examines the framework and conceptual underpinnings that lead to the establishment of CAB dealing with the long and short causal factors that lead to a refocusing of the overall approach to criminality. It adopts an operation analysis approach to consider the tri-part elements of forfeiture, revenue powers and social welfare powers that form the central tenants of the civil approach that CAB adopts. In highlighting the operational approach and actual outcomes achieved by CAB it provides a case study of a modern criminological tool of disruption and discontinuity that operates against the financial base of crime as opposed to the criminal actor.