Individuals who commit crimes often have support from family or community members who benefit from the illegal profits. Holding families or groups liable could help deter crimes like terrorism by providing incentives for internal monitoring. There are two rationales for group liability: 1) target the constituency that benefits, similar to vicarious liability, or 2) identify superior enforcers since groups can monitor members more effectively. Imposing liability on families or groups could lower enforcement costs for the government by delegating monitoring responsibilities, but it also increases monitoring costs for local groups. An economic model of group liability may help address crimes and terrorism with consideration of internal and global contexts.

1. Published: 19 July 2020
https://dailyasianage.com/news/235816/group-and-family-liability-of-crime-accused
Group and family liability of crime accused
M S Siddiqui
While member of a family or a community earn illegal money, the members of the family or group
enjoy the benefits of illegal income but the law does not bring into indictment because the law
does not cover crime and corruption. Individual offender bears the full burden of the sanction.
The cumbersome trial system, wastage of time and insecurity and poor law order situation
prompted the citizen to avoid submission as witness. The moral of citizen may be also
questionable. The lack of witness paves the ways to go back to society from the court with clean
hands. Citizens are hardly interested to go to Court to deliver statement as witness of any
offence or crime. There are some professional witnesses available in the society on payment to
give false testimony.
Crimes and corruption are not commit by individuals only acting in isolation, without regard to
other possible accomplish. Hiding of illegal money often committed with the active support of
other members of the family. An act of crime and terrorism, the nature, the goal and the
magnitude of terror crimes make terrorism more like corporate crime and organized crime than
individual crime although individual may independently carry out any act.
Families of terrorist members may directly or indirectly support terrorist activities, concealing the
whereabouts of the members or providing practical or financial assistance. In the context of
terrorist organizations, the crime results from the concerted or interdependent action of various
actors committing it.
There are many stories and nobles mostly of period of British rule, describing the arrest of family
members for allegation of one member although this is not valid in the eye of law.
The global criminal and terrorism experts are concerned of the methods and financial support of
crimes and offences. The network is now global due to open market and excess to information
technology. The focuses are on global partners of crime and terrorism.
The anti-terrorism and Anti-money laundering law promulgated by most of the nations and global
co-operation is part of the anti terrorism movements and these are very expensive for the
mankind.

2. Again family and groups of individual suspects are on focal point. There is hardly any distinction
between toleration, support and sponsorship becomes relevant in the context of legal policies of
communal liability. Historically, groups and clans were liable for the wrongs committed by group
members and this ensured effective internal monitoring of the troublemakers within the group. In
ancient societies, rules of communal responsibility permitted the imposition of sanctions - both
physical and pecuniary on a wrongdoer’s clan.
The rule of communal liability were an effective instrument for restoring law and order, in an
environment characterized by limited access to information outside the group and
underdeveloped discovery systems. These societies were characterized by a substantial lack of
privacy and this facilitated the opportunities for cross-monitoring members within the group. The
characteristics of strict and communal liability for injuries, and collective guilt, fundamentally
derive from the high information costs of ancient society.
There are many methods to prevent crime. The criminal incapacitation is better rather than
deterrence. Efficient incapacitation is achieve by eliminating opportunities for crime and
corruption at minimum cost for society. One possibility is simply to eliminate the physical ability to
commit offenses by imprisonment or by imposing the death penalty. Another possibility is to
reduce assets made available to terrorism by cutting terrorists off from their funds.
Honor, pride and family status limit the persuasive power that individual punishment will have on
a potential terrorist and financial penalties are unlikely to play any substantive role with respect to
individual terrorists, but may play a larger role regarding fund-supporting organizations. A Large
financial liability of groups and families that provide support, or could have prevented the
commission of a terrorist act serves this purpose.
There are two different rationales for group liability. The first is based on the idea that terrorism
has a “constituency” that benefits from terrorist acts. The group liability would target the
constituency who benefits from the terrorist act.
This is similar to the foundation of vicarious liability of the principal for the acts of the agent. This
form of “communal liability” might prove more effective than individual criminal liability of those
who are directly involved in the terrorist activity.
Within this framework of group-wide liability, family or group members of a crime, corruption and
terrorism of family and community become quasi-enforcers. Since groups and families are held
strictly liable for their members’ actions.
This is a rationale that focuses on the wrongdoers’ external benefits. The second rationale
instead focuses on the identification of superior enforcers. Liability is imposed on the
wrongdoer’s group not because the group benefits from the terrorist acts, but because the group
can monitor and prevent terrorist acts more effectively.
This theory based on famous legal economist Gary Becker’s analysis, supposes that spreading
liability to the members of the group or family infrastructure will provide some level of internal
monitoring, and eventually ex post sanctions on members of the group that occasion the
imposition of financial liability on the group as a whole.
The most obvious case of liabilities should be spread over on active supporters of terrorism, and
the less obvious case of liability for those who benefit indirectly from those illegal acts. The
recent acts of crime by certain individuals bring the issue for discussions whether the family
members and other group members are passive supporter of these crimes.
Group responsibility is delegation of responsibility of monitoring and controlling potential offender
by the family. It lowers the cost of enforcement to the government, but it increases the monitoring
costs to such local groups. In doing so, the government must make sure the group has the

3. appropriate incentives to monitor and eventually penalize its members for engaging in criminal
activities that lead to liability for the group.
It will deter those harmful activities that are easily observable but will induce active terrorists to
engage relatively more in those harmful activities that are hardly observable and controllable by
their families and group members.
We may consider the economic model of group liability for individual, family and party for certain
offences and terrorism in the context of internal and global scenario.
The writer is a legal economist
Email: mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com.