‘Collaring’ the Crime and the Criminal?: ‘Jury Psychology’ and Some Criminological Perspectives on Fraud and the Criminal Law

This article concerns proposed changes to English criminal law, which will be directed at tackling the problem of fraud. Notwithstanding the considerable energy channelled into the genesis of the Fraud Bill currently before Parliament, this article points to the ways in which far too little attention has been paid to the highly ambivalent nature of fraud in societal consciousness. While drawing extensively upon workings of criminology to illustrate the difficulties apparent in achieving societal recognition of fraud as serious crime, and even ‘real’ crime at all, this article points to a number of problems which might flow from the Fraud Bill's enactment which are far from ‘abstract’, and which could seriously undermine the raison d'être of the proposed legislation.