Telecommunications and Crime: Regulatory Dilemmas

This paper examines the regulatory context of crime arising from the connectivity of computing and communications. Nine varieties of telecommunications‐related crime are considered: theft of services, communications in furtherance of criminal conspiracies, telecommunications piracy, the dissemination of offensive materials, electronic money laundering, electronic vandalism, telemarketing fraud, illegal interception, and electronic funds transfer fraud. The paper concludes that the most appropriate configuration of regulatory strategies for the control of telecommunications‐related crime entails a mixture of law enforcement, and technological and market‐based solutions. The pursuit of a strict regulatory agenda is, in most cases, not feasible because of the limited capacity of the state. Over‐regulation, moreover, may stifle commercial and technological development. It is argued that the marketplace may be able to provide more efficient solutions to the problems of telecommunications crime than state interventions.     

Introduction: Problem‐Solving Courts

Problem‐solving courts have become a significant feature of the U.S. justice system, and their popularity appears to be growing internationally with courts under way or in development in countries such as Australia and Great Britain. Drug courts are the most visible type of problem‐solving court, but other varieties are beginning to take hold. Mental health courts, domestic violence courts, and community‐based courts among others are beginning to handle a considerable portion of the legal workload in many jurisdictions. Criminal law violations as well as neighborhood conflicts and interpersonal disputes are increasingly being referred to problem‐solving courts rather than to traditional criminal or civil courts.     

Distributive Justice and Crime

The heavy concentration of crime on a few areas, and the concentration on the chronically victimised within those areas, together illustrate the gross inequality of the risk of crime victimisation. This inequality also characterises other hazards of life. Criminology has too often reduced the problem of crime to the problem of the offender. Recognising crime hazard as an issue of distributive justice requires a different mind set. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 recognises the drivers of crime as lying outside criminal justice, but does not put in place a panhazard analysis of the kind required, community safety being presented as a type of crime prevention. Movement towards panhazard thinking may well be somewhat facilitated by the workingthrough of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights, actions flowing from section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act, and a reconsideration of how emergency services might work.     

An Examination of the Denver Drug Court: The Impact of a Treatment‐Oriented Drug‐Offender System

This paper reports on a retrospective study of the Denver Drug Court that was conducted to assess the court's impact on court processing, treatment matching, and offender recidivism. A sample of 300 offenders from the Denver Drug Court and drug offenders from two previous years prior to the drug court was obtained. Quasi‐experimental procedures were used to examine differences in measured variables across each offender cohort. Data for this study were collected from court records as well as through on‐line arrest records. This paper begins with an exploration of the organizational framework of the Denver Drug Court and the court's related treatment options. It also examines the extant literature on the effectiveness of drug courts. Analysis of the data indicates that the Denver Drug Court has reduced case processing time and it has slightly reduced the amount of time offenders spend in presentence confinement. Unlike previous studies of drug courts, this study attempted to examine the court's ability to match offenders to treatment needs. Analysis of the available data, although limited, suggests that offenders are being matched to appropriate levels of treatment. Finally, data analysis indicates no significant differences in revocation or rearrest rates. This article concludes with a discussion of the controversial nature of drug courts. Directions for future research are offered.     

The Effect of Legal and Extra‐Legal Variables on the Recommending and Granting of a Pardon

A familiar but little studied area of criminal justice is that of pardons. Using data from the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, the decision‐making process is examined to determine the degree of correspondence between the board's recommendation and the governor's decision to grant or deny a pardon. Included in the analysis is an assessment of the relative impact of legal and extra‐legal variables on the decision‐making process. The paper concludes with a discussion on the dynamics of the process, including why some individuals are more likely than others to be granted a pardon, and the implications the findings have for both policy and theory development.     

Identifying what works: Recent trends in crime prevention strategies

This paper reviews lessons learned from evaluations of crime prevention programs in the past three decades and discusses how crime prevention approaches have changed in terms of theory, research, evaluation, and public policy. We argue that present strategies of crime prevention may be best understood by tracing the failures of earlier American crime prevention efforts. The paper discusses different types of crime prevention strategies and draws upon examples from developmental, law enforcement, and criminal justice approaches. From this discussion emerges a set of principles for a new approach to crime prevention that is specific in terms of the problems addressed and the contexts examined. The paper concludes with examples of recent crime prevention strategies that utilize these lessons and that appear to have promising effects on crime. While these approaches suggest optimism in terms of the crime prevention potential of new strategies, we urge caution in that these new crime prevention efforts are at an early stage of development. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Expressing Conflict, Neutralizing Blame, and Making Concessions in Small‐Claims Mediation

This research examines the link between the way small‐claims mediation participants express their conflicts and their willingness to engage in concession‐making. Observations of seventy‐seven mediation participants suggest that a significant factor in this relationship is the way participants manage the issue of blame. The research identifies three categories of mediants: individuals named in a civil suit who represent themselves; agents, usually lawyers, who represent the interests of other parties in a civil suit; and business owners or managers who represent the interests of their establishments. The study depicts some of the differences in the way these participants describe their conflicts. In particular, the research suggests that the manner in which mediation participants handle the issue of blame – by either justifying, excusing, or denying it – constrains their willingness to engage in concession‐making, a fundamental aspect of the mediation process. I discuss implications for future research and for developing strategies that might improve the effectiveness of mediation for some participants.     

Hot Spots of Crime and Place‐Based Prevention

The August Vollmer Award Address is intended to focus on contributions to justice and on the recipient's research and policy experiences. This contribution begins with the recipient recapping his personal journey to recognizing hot spots of crime and their importance for prevention. He then goes on to summarize the “law of crime concentration” and its importance for the logic model underlying this approach. He describes the seminal Minneapolis Hot Spots Patrol Experiment and the subsequent evaluation research in hot‐spots policing and place‐based prevention more generally that led to its broad acceptance as an effective crime prevention strategy. Finally, the author turns to key unanswered questions in place‐based prevention, focusing on police legitimacy, identifying jurisdictional effects, and emphasizing the importance of harnessing informal social controls.     

Reconsidering Styles of Regulatory Enforcement: Patterns in Danish Agro‐Environmental Inspection

This study addresses enforcement styles of regulatory inspectors, based on an examination of the municipal enforcement of agro‐environmental policies in Denmark. Our findings make three contributions to the regulatory literature. One contribution is to add empirical support for theorizing about inspectors' enforcement styles as consisting of multiple components, rather than a single continuum. We show that inspectors' enforcement styles comprise the degree of formalism and the degree of coercion that they exercise when carrying out inspections. A second contribution is in showing the relationship of different types of enforcement styles to the two underlying dimensions of the concept. A third contribution is an examination of the ways in which inspectors' enforcement styles relate to their enforcement actions. The consistency of our findings with those of other studies suggests that the dimensions and types of inspectors' enforcement styles that we observed in Denmark can be generalized to other settings.     

Science, politics, and crime prevention: Toward a new crime policy

Objective

Crime prevention has entered a new, more robust phase of research activity and holds greater relevance to policy and practice today than ever before. It stands as an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. This paper sets out a modest proposal for a new crime policy to help build a safer, more sustainable society.

Materials and methods

Narrative meta-review of the crime prevention literature.

Results

The central features include: ensuring that the highest quality scientific research is at center stage in the policy-making process; overcoming the “short-termism” politics of the day; and striking a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control. Both simulation studies and experiences in Washington State show that early prevention can reduce crime, save money, and reduce the need for costly incarceration.

Conclusions

Quality criminological research should be used to strike a policy balance between crime prevention and crime control.     

Cyber-insurance in EU policy-making: Regulatory options,the market's challenges and the US example

Over the last decades digital technologies have penetrated our daily lives affecting all aspects of our societal and economic activities. Even though the benefits of relying on information systems to run everyday tasks, organise one's business, interact with each other or enjoy public services are undisputable, the increasing use of digital technologies comes with a price: the growing exposure to cyber risks. This new type of threat has been in the center of the EU agenda for over 15 years during which a solid legislative framework for the protection S of network and information systems against cyber incidents has been developed. However, security and resilience of infrastructures and networks is one parameter of the challenge. Dealing with the financial risk emerging from a cyber incident, is another, equally important one. The need to mitigate these risks led to the emergence of a new insurance market, the cyber insurance market. Despite though the constantly growing demand for this type of insurance coverage, the market is still under development. The fast-evolving nature of cyber threats, the lack of a common language as regards risks, losses and coverages and the lack of historical data on cyber incidents are listed among the factors that slow down the market's growth. Currently, all involved stakeholders in the insurance field are considering specific initiatives that would accelerate the process of turning the EU market more competitive and efficient against its many challenges. The example of the US cyber insurance market, with its shortcomings and know-how, could also contribute to this effort, as an example of a market that has been intensively facing these challenges for almost twenty years.     

A System��s Approach to Crime Prevention: The Case of Macao

Macao has the world’s largest casino industry and represents a unique political, social, and cultural system that differs significantly from Western societies. The overall crime rate in Macao is relatively low. Scholarly knowledge about crime and crime prevention in Macao, however, is very limited. This paper first reviews crime prevention theories, typologies, and various strategies in Western societies, followed by an introduction and discussion of crime prevention practices in Macao. Crime prevention strategies in Macao may be characterized as a tripod structure with three major supporting legs: traditional criminal justice practices, social prevention beyond the criminal justice system, and situational crime prevention measures. The paper then discusses the factors that may contribute to the low level of crime in Macao and points out the direction for future research in Macao.     

Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Modeling for Analysing Local Patterns of Crime Over Time at the Small-Area Level

Objectives

Explore Bayesian spatio-temporal methods to analyse local patterns of crime change over time at the small-area level through an application to property crime data in the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada.

Methods

This research represents the first application of Bayesian spatio-temporal modeling to crime trend analysis at a large map scale. The Bayesian model, fitted by Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation using WinBUGS, stabilized risk estimates in small (census dissemination) areas and controlled for spatial autocorrelation (through spatial random effects modeling), deprivation, and scarce data. It estimated (1) (linear) mean trend; (2) area-specific differential trends; and (3) (posterior) probabilities of area-specific differential trends differing from zero (i.e. away from the mean trend) for revealing locations of hot and cold spots.

Results

Property crime exhibited a declining mean trend across the study region from 2006 to 2007. Variation of area-specific trends was statistically significant, which was apparent from the map of (95 % credible interval) differential trends. Hot spots in the north and south west, and cold spots in the middle and east of the region were identified.

Conclusions

Bayesian spatio-temporal analysis contributes to a detailed understanding of small-area crime trends and risks. It estimates crime trend for each area as well as an overall mean trend. The new approach of identifying hot/cold spots through analysing and mapping probabilities of area-specific crime trends differing from the mean trend highlights specific locations where crime situation is deteriorating or improving over time. Future research should analyse trends over three or more periods (allowing for non-linear time trends) and associated (changing) local risk factors.     

Community Safety and Social Policy

This article examines community safety policy. In many countries community safety has become a replacement discourse for situational crime prevention, although in some countries such as the UK, it too is threatened with replacement by the narrower concerns of crime reduction. Community safety represents the apparent merging of the concerns of criminal justice and social policy, specifically over questions of social inclusion and exclusion. Focusing in the main upon UK policy, but also drawing upon experience elsewhere, this article scrutinises the policy of community safety, arguing that while it offers an inclusionary vision of crime control, its practice may be something rather different. More specifically, and in common with the trajectory of much advanced liberal social policy, in practice community safety may have an exclusionary effect. Thus, while community safety may represent the convergence of social and criminal justice policies, it does so on neoliberal rather than welfare liberal terms. It also means that community safety has a closer connection to policies of punitive sovereignty – particularly sentencing policies of mass incarceration – than might often be assumed.     

保险诈骗罪若干疑难问题探究

有关保险诈骗罪的主体争议:冒名骗赔的行为应定性为保险诈骗罪;隐名的投保人、被保险人可以成为保险诈骗罪的主体;保险人、保险经纪人、保险代理人诈骗投保人、被保险人、受益人的应定性为诈骗罪。虚构保险标的的表现:虚构根本不存在的保险标的;恶意超额保险;恶意重复保险;虚构保险利益;将不合格的标的虚构为合格的保险标的;事后保险。内外勾结共同骗取保险金的行为应一律认定为职务侵占罪或者贪污罪。     

论和谐社会构建中警察的犯罪防控角色

构建和谐社会成为时代的主题，防控犯罪是警察组织在推动和谐社会构建中的主要职责之一。但在社会综合治理的犯罪防控体系中，警察组织如何发挥特有的专业化作用、如何与其他社会组织共同协作，如何在多元化的犯罪防控主体中定位好自己的角色也是保证犯罪防控体系整体和谐需要思考的问题。     

Delinquency theory and prevention: A radical alternative

Twentieth century America has seen several delinquency prevention programs come into vogue and then collapse under the pressure of ever increasing rates of delinquency; pressuring policy makers to continue their search for new and better programs. Yet, new prevention programs are not pulled out of a hat. Because these programs are based on certain assumptions about human behavior they are, for the most part, derived from theories of crime and delinquency causation. Pursuing this relationship between theory and practice, this paper grounds the emergence of delinquency prevention with the development of positivist criminology, identifies the conceptual and practical deficiencies of positivist theories of crime and subsequent prevention strategies and presents the prevention directive of contemporary Marxist “Critical Criminology.”     

Measuring the Distribution of Crime and Its Concentration

Objectives

Generally speaking, crime is, fortunately, a rare event. As far as modelling is concerned, this sparsity of data means that traditional measures to quantify concentration are not appropriate when applied to crime suffered by a population. Our objective is to develop a new technique to measure the concentration of crime which takes into account its low frequency of occurrence and its high degree of concentration in such a way that this measure is comparable over time and over different populations.

Methods

This article derives an estimate of the distribution of crime suffered by a population based on a mixture model and then evaluates a new and standardised measurement of the concentration of the rates of suffering a crime based on that distribution.

Results

The new measure is successfully applied to the incidence of robbery of a person in Mexico and is able to correctly quantify the concentration crime in such a way that is comparable between different regions and can be tracked over different time periods.

Conclusions

The risk of suffering a crime is not uniformly distributed across a population. There are certain groups which are statistically immune to suffering crime but there are also groups which suffer chronic victimisation. This measure improves our understanding of how patterns of crime can be quantified allowing us to determine if a prevention policy results in a crime reduction rather than target displacement. The method may have applications beyond crime science.