On November 14, 2013, Professor Dervan was called to testify before the United States House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force. Available here is his written testimony. In his written testimony, Professor Dervan examines the phenomenon of...

Our criminal codes are replete with “dead crimes”—i.e., crimes that are openly violated, have long gone unenforced, and no longer reflect majoritarian views. For example, many states still criminalize conduct as commonplace as engaging in certain innocuous behavior on Sundays, swearing,...

Many regard the 2010–2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI)Reform as a national model to improve ex-offenders' labor market outcomes. This reform prohibits most employers from inquiring about an individual's criminal history on the initial job application (the “ban...

This paper examines how changes in employers' access to job applicants' criminal histories affect ex-offender recidivism. We use extensive state administrative data on individual criminal histories spanning the 2010–2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) Reform, widely...

The article presents a novel dynamic setting to compare old – usury – and new – cryptocurrency – money laundering techniques and uses it for calibration to shed light on their relative role as an effective device for the criminal organizations to clean their illegal revenues. The...

In advanced economies, the recent collapse of interest rates to the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) has triggered a series of research questions on how to navigate the new zero-interest credit environment. Focusing on illegal markets, it is possible to explain why usury still remains widespread after the...

During the 1990s, Latin America experienced a criminal procedural revolution (LACPR) when approximately 70% of its countries abandoned their inquisitorial system and adopted the U.S. adversarial model. Followed the LACPR, the region experienced a dramatic increase in crime, consolidating it as...