Are Essay Mills fraud that is committing? An analysis of the behaviours vs the 2006 Fraud Act (UK)
International Journal for Educational Integrity volume 13, Article number: 3 ( 2017 ) | Download Citation
Many strategies have already been proposed to address the utilization of Essay Mills along with other ‘contract cheating’ services by students. These services generally offer bespoke custom-written essays or any other assignments to students in exchange for a fee. There were calls for the employment of legal methods to tackle the problem. Here we determine whether the UK Fraud Act (2006) could be used www.essaywritersite.com/write-my-paper-for-me to tackle a few of the activities of companies providing these types of services into the UK, by comparing their common practises, and their conditions and terms, using the Act. We found that all of the sites examined have disclaimers in connection with use of their products but there are lots of obvious contradictions in those activities of the sites which undermine these disclaimers, for instance all sites offer plagiarism-free guarantees for the task and also at least eight have advertising which generally seems to contradict their terms and conditions. We identify possible areas in which the Act might be used to follow a legal case but overall conclude that such a method is unlikely to be effective. We call for a offence that is new be created in UK law which specifically targets the undesirable behaviours among these companies in the UK, even though principles might be applied elsewhere. We also highlight other UK approaches that are legal may be much more successful.
Introduction
The utilization of so-called ‘contract cheating’ services by students happens to be a supply of controversy and debate within advanced schooling, particularly when you look at the decade that is last. ‘Contract cheating’ refers, basically, towards the outsourcing of assessments by students, to third parties who work that is complete their behalf in return for a fee or other benefit (Lancaster and Clarke 2016). These types of services offer ‘custom assignments’ of nearly every form, although custom written essays seem to be the most typical. Students tend to be in a position to specify the grade they desire (although there is not any guarantee this will be delivered), request drafts, referencing styles and nearly every other custom feature (Newton and Lang 2016). Services available are cheap and quick(Wallace and Newton 2014) and students underestimate the severe nature with which universities penalise the utilization of contract cheating services (Newton 2015). Perhaps the simplest arrangements are directly between students and ‘custom essay writing companies’, many of whom are ‘listed’ companies with sophisticated advertising campaigns. However there are lots of ways in which students can use third parties to complete work for them, with the contract spread across continents; writers may behave as freelancers, doing work in another country into the student and their institution. These freelance article writers could make use of online auction services to advertise and organise their work and these can be in just one more national country, and there could be another intermediary; a person who receives the order through the student and then posts the job on an auction site (Newton and Lang 2016; Sivasubramaniam et al. 2016). Thus there are multiple actors in contract cheating, one or more of whom can be liable if their actions violate the law; students, their universities, the persons paying tuition fees, writers, people who employ writers, the internet sites which host the writers, advertising companies, those who host the advertising, and so forth. Here we focus primarily on UK-registered essay-writing companies.
Across education, a student who completes an assessment to make credit towards an award is normally required to achieve this from the explicit basis that the submission is their own independent work. Ideally, both students and staff are given guidance by what constitutes misconduct that is academic the consequences of such misconduct (Morris 2015), in a manner that promotes an optimistic, constructive approach to fostering ‘academic integrity’ (Thomas and Scott 2016). If a student submits work this is certainly shown to comprise, in whole or in part, material which is not their particular independent work then that student will normally face a range of penalties, administered by their university, for academic misconduct. These usually include cancellation of marks for the relevant module or the relevant component of the module subject to any mitigating circumstances (Tennant and Duggan 2008) in the UK. Historically, these behaviours haven’t been dealt with through legal mechanisms in the united kingdom (QAA 2016) and also this relates to plagiarism outside academic circumstances which, into the words of Saunders,”. just isn’t if it breaches an established legal right, such as copyright, or offends against the law of misrepresentation or other legal rules” (Saunders 2010) in itself illegal; it is only illegal.
However, a widely used test in making legal decisions is to determine how a ‘reasonable person’ might view a behaviour that is particular. If asked to describe the purchasing of essays for submission for the purposes of gaining academic credit it seems logical to conclude that a reasonable person would conclude that such behaviour is ‘fraudulent’, particularly because of the language connected with it (e.g. ‘cheating’). If another individual has knowingly assisted in that activity chances are they might reasonably be believed to have assisted, conspired or colluded in such academic fraud, cheating or dishonesty.
If a student has purchased written work from another individual or a business for the purpose of passing it off as his or her own work it is clear that the student commits academic misconduct, but what of this individual or company that supplied the work in return for payment? From what extent is the fact that individual or company (an ‘assistor’) complicit in such misconduct? What is the potential liability of the assistor and will action be taken against them? Will be the assistors by their action inciting academic fraud? An educational institution cannot normally take action against the assistor under internal disciplinary procedures unless the assistor is a student in the same institution. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, can there be the chance of fraudulent behaviour within the relationship between the learning student and also the company?
Broadly, legal wrongs committed in England and Wales may be addressed through the civil or law that is criminalUK Government 2016a). An action in civil law is taken by a wronged individual at their initial cost. This cost is normally prohibitive and in addition normally requires the formulation of a claim recognised by the law that evidences loss or harm to the claimant that is individual by the defendant as well as which an answer is sought. Thus the power of educational institutions (or a student for instance) to take civil action against assistors is restricted.
Action in relation to UK law that is criminal normally undertaken by and at the expense of their state through the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) but requires a criminal offence to have been committed (private prosecutions at private cost are possible but relatively rare). The Code for Crown Prosecutors sets out of the principles that are basic be accompanied by Crown Prosecutors if they make case decisions. Crown Prosecutors must certanly be satisfied that there’s enough evidence to provide a “realistic prospect of conviction” and that it will be the public interest to follow a prosecution (UK Government 2013).
A purpose with this paper is always to assess the extent that a company organisation who supplies an essay or written work upon instructions from a student in return for money may be liable underneath the criminal law of England and Wales for an offence underneath the Fraud Act 2006 (The Act) (UK Government 2006). The Act commenced operation on 15 2007 by the Fraud Act 2006 (Commencement) Order 2006 SI 2006/3200 january. The Act pertains to offences committed wholly on or after 15 2007 and extends to England, Wales and Northern Ireland january.
In August 2016 the united kingdom regulator of Higher Education, the Quality Assurance agency, considered all approaches to deal with contract cheating, an issue which they stated “poses a serious risk into the academic standards additionally the integrity of UK higher education” (QAA 2016). Their consideration of possible legal approaches under existing law concluded that the Fraud Act was the “nearest applicable legislation”, but they failed to reach a firm conclusion on its use, stating that “Case law generally seems to indicate a reluctance in the area of the courts to be involved in cases involving plagiarism, deeming this to be a matter for academic judgement that falls outside of the competence associated with court (Hines v Birkbeck College 1985 3 All ER 15)” (QAA 2016).
The QAA state that the UK 2006 Fraud Act is “untested in this context” in their conclusion. Here we explore the detail for the Fraud Act further, and compare it to your established business practises of UK-registered essay-writing companies, with a particular concentrate on their Terms and Conditions.
