Spatio-Temporal Change of Crime at Provincial Scale in China—Since the Economic Reform

China has undergone tremendous social changes during the transition since the Economic Reform, and this paper did a comparative study on crime change patterns among provinces both spatially and temporally. The results indicated that (1) regional differences on crime levels and temporal change trends were largely influenced, or even been shaped, by the outcomes brought by economic reform, such as priority developmental policies, geographical location, transportation facilities, etc. For example, spatially, more developed areas with more governmental policy supports not only saw dramatic development during the economic reform but also showed higher criminal rates and greater criminal rate variation. (2) The relationships between criminal rates and corresponding contextual conditions vary by temporal scales (long-run and short-run), regions, target areas’ features and their different development policy priorities; (3) experiences from Western theories and empirical studies cannot be applied directly into the Chinese society, without taking into consideration of the spatial-temporal scales and target’s specialities; it is also suggestive to local policy-makers and governmental agencies that crime reduction and prevention measures should not be identical to other places and need to be made according to local characteristics.     

Entrepreneurial activity and regional competitiveness: evidence from European entrepreneurial universities

The interesting relationship between entrepreneurial activity and regional competitiveness has been a major focus of academics, university managers, and policy makers during the past decades—in particular the role of institutions in the establishment of political, social, and economic rules-. For example, since the enactment of the US Bayh–Dole Act more than 30 years ago, many American cities and regions are increasingly viewing universities as potential engines of economic growth. In these new socioeconomic scenarios, the role of entrepreneurial universities is not only generates/transfers knowledge but also contributes/provides leadership for the creation of entrepreneurial thinking, actions, and institutions. Previous studies have shown the university’s role in economic development, but no empirical study has analyzed the entrepreneurial activity generated by university students per university at the country/regional level of analysis. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the university’s entrepreneurial activity on regional competitiveness. Adopting the institutional economics and the endogenous growth approaches, a proposed conceptual framework was developed and tested with structural equation modeling using data from 102 universities located in 56 NUTS II of 12 European countries. Our results evidenced that informal factors (e.g., attitudes, role models) have a higher influence on university entrepreneurial activity than formal factors (e.g., support measures, education and training). Our results also evidenced a higher contribution of universities on regional competitiveness, in particular, when we used social measures (talent human capital) instead economic measures (GDP per capita).     

POLICING CORRUPTION AND ECONOMIC CRIME — HOW CAN WE DO IT BETTER?

While history records that economically motivated crime and misconduct in its various forms has existed since the earliest civilizations and has always raised issues of fairness and integrity, in recent years additional concerns have come to the fore. Economic stability particularly in an interdependent world, has thrown up issues related to stability and security. The tools that have been developed to address certain manifestations of economic misconduct and in particular the development of financial intelligence are now used across a much broader spectrum than merely the control of fraud and corruption. We use, for example, the regimes that have been designed to identify suspect wealth for a variety of purposes including the raising of revenue which have less relevance to the direct interdiction of financial crime. This paper considers from a practical rather than conceptual standpoint how best to address the risks and issues thrown up by economically motivated crime and also the mechanisms that have been adopted to address it. In particular it seeks to examine various ways in which economically motivated crime may be better discouraged and its impact mitigated. It does not pretend to be a deeply conceptual analysis of the relevant law given its aspiration to have a wider significance and purchase than one jurisdiction. What it does do, however, is to seek to build upon practical experience and apply it to the fashioning of enhanced weapons in the fight against economic crime.     

中国东盟打击跨国犯罪刑事合作机制探析

中国东盟打击跨国犯罪刑事合作是双边政治、经贸发展的需要;已经建立的双边协商机制和法律合作机制是开展打击跨国犯罪的基础。中国和东盟国家已经签署的引渡条约在政治犯罪不引渡、本国国民不引渡等问题规定落后双边打击犯罪现实,亟需改进;中国和东盟国家司法协助形式较单一,需要增加。对于尚未与中国签署引渡条约的国家,由于不能根据国际公约开展引渡合作,只能开创新的合作思路。未来中国东盟打击跨国犯罪刑事合作应当向着建立区域机构、区域统一逮捕令、强化人员培训技术合作以及网络信息建设方向发展。     

Economic structure and vulnerability to organised crime: Evidence from Sicily

The economic analysis of organised crime suggests that some economic activities are particularly vulnerable to penetration by criminal organisations. This paper provides an analysis of the structure of the Sicilian economy and shows that, when compared with other Italian regions, it is characterised by a disproportionate presence of such activities. In particular, the economy of Sicily appears characterised by: (i) a large dimension of traditional sectors, such as the Construction sector, which also has a strong territorial specificity; (ii) a large presence of small firms; (iii) a low level of technology; (iii) a large public sector. The joint presence of these features creates fertile soil for the typical activities of organised crime, such as extortion and cartel enforcement. Hence, we propose an alternative explanation of the persistence of organised crime with respect to explanations based on cultural and social factors.     

A COMPARISON OF CRIME REPORTAGE IN TWO NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS: DAILY TIMES AND NEW NIGERIAN

This study compares crime reportage in the two major newspapers in Nigeria, Daily Times and New Nigerian, from August 1 to October 31, 1983, utilizing a content analysis methodology. The Daily Times (jointly owned by the Government and the private interest) exceed the New Nigerian (totally owned by the Government) in total crime reports, average daily reports, average number of lines per report and the ratio of space-utilization for crime vs. non-crime reportage. It is likely that newspapers totally owned and controlled by the government, e.g., New Nigerian, are less likely to publish crime reports in general and political crimes in particular than newspapers owned and controlled in part by the private sector, e.g., Daily Times. Both newspapers covered political crimes more frequently (36 percent of total reports) than any other type of crime and its subcategory “riots and demonstrations” comprised 44 percent of all political crimes. This finding reflects Nigeria's problems of neo-colonization and ethnic, religious, political, economic and regional heterogeneity, resulting in a series of violent coups and counter-coups since the country's independence in 1960.     

Chinese technology transfer policy: the case of the national independent innovation demonstration zone of East Lake

This paper analyzes the technology transfer policies that are being developed to reduce the regional disparities in economic growth in China. In particular, these technology transfer policies focus on increasing the innovative activity in central China, in order to spur economic development and growth.     

Water always finds its way: Identifying new forms of money laundering

Money laundering regulations have become stricter over time and involve more and more actors. This means that the accountability of laundering regulation will become more important; theoretically, money laundering should have decreased with the implementation of new regulations. However, as this paper shows, it is difficult to estimate even the sign of the trend in the proceeds of crime and of laundering over time with particular reference to the drug trade. There seems to be a substitution from hard to softer drugs, and no substantial decline in the proceeds of crime and likewise no substantial decline in money laundering. Criminals seem to switch from the more controlled banking sector into still less controlled parts of financial markets, and from financial markets to other sectors. These new sectors include electronic payments, trade and real estate. The paper shows how one can empirically approach the latter two by using economic information of unusual prices and other characteristics in order to identify the amount of laundering in these sectors. Combining economic information with criminological data facilitates the development of a new tool for identifying money laundering in some important sectors.     

An introduction to the special issue on ‘Organised crime and illegal markets in the UK and Ireland’

This paper provides an introduction to the articles and report excerpt submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime on ‘Organised crime and illegal markets in the UK and Ireland’. The aim of the special issue is to draw together empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on various manifestations of organised crime in the particular geographic context(s), the evolution of organised crime, the links between organised crime, the legal sphere and paramilitary groups, as well as an account of the demographic profile and attitudes of citizens in areas in which organised crime groups thrive.     

Environmental crime and green criminology in South Eastern Europe—practice and research

All contemporary societies are facing environmental crime as one among many modern threats to the environment and human / animal life and this is due to the unlimited exploitation of natural resources and pollution. The aim of the present paper is to describe different responses to environmental crime and the development of green criminology in South Eastern Europe. In this region environmental crime occurs under the influence of social conditions and circumstances in which the environment is used as a source of resources for survival, as well as economic factors which mean the environment is used as a resource for profit. For countries in South Eastern Europe it is typical that environmental criminals change their modus operandi and adapt to new socio-economic circumstances, use different loopholes in legislation and exploit gaps in infrastructure and enforcement leading to committing environmental offences without being processed and punished. In many countries of South Eastern Europe green criminology is still in its nascent stages but is focusing on similar obstacles and challenges to those identified elsewhere, such as multi-disciplinarity, cooperation with the natural sciences, and responding to particularities in the region, such as pollution of marine and coastal ecosystems, hunting tourism, and organized crimes such as timber logging.     

THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ON ROBBERY AND PROPERTY CRIME: THE ROLE OF CONSUMER SENTIMENT*

Despite its long history in criminology, research on the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and rates of common crime remains limited. That is in part because many analysts doubt that any systematic relationship exists and in part because of disagreement with regard to the validity of the indicators typically used to measure economic conditions. We argue in this article that good theoretical reasons exist to expect macroeconomic effects on crime rates, but many theories imply that collective perceptions of economic hardship should have effects on crime that are independent of those of more “objective” economic indicators. To evaluate this argument, we examine the relationships between the Index of Consumer Sentiment and regional robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft rates in the United States between 1970 and 2003, which was a period of large swings in both consumer sentiment and instrumental crime. Controlling for several factors thought to influence temporal variation in crime rates, we find that consumer sentiment had significant effects on robbery and property crime rates over the period that were largely independent of the effects of unemployment and economic growth. We also find that consumer sentiment accounted for a sizable fraction of the crime decline during the 1990s and yields reasonably accurate predictions of changes in the four offenses in 2004 and in two of the four offenses in 2005. We conclude that the effects of collective economic perceptions should become an important focus of future research on crime trends.     

Islam, modernization and crime: A test of the religious ecology thesis

Using a United Nations (United Nations, 1977) cross-national data set on offender and offense rates for a variety of crimes, this article qualifies recent research into religiosity by investigating the relationship between Islamic religion, economic development, and crime rates. Considerable research has demonstrated a positive correlation between economic development (often defined as modernization) and crime. Other research has suggested that religion is an impedence to crime, although the results are a little less clear. No previous studies have examined the relationship between the Islamic religion and crime. Results suggest that, when level of economic development is held constant, Islamic countries do not differ significantly in crime rates compared to nonIslamic countries.     

Taking crime out of crime business

It is one thing to assert that conventional market analysis is critically useful in understanding criminal enterprise. It is more challenging to suggest that corrupt and compromised legal regulation interacts with other critical market variables to maximise market advantage for crime business in a similar manner to legitimate regulatory forces in their protection and enhancement of legitimate business enterprise. The central argument of this paper is that crime business mirrors other business forms when considered in terms of critical market variables, and that in particular regulatory forces when inverted from their original purposes can influence market conditions in the same ways desired from the legitimate regulatory form. The main research direction deriving from the analysis of regulatory influences over specific criminal enterprises is how do certain critical market forces essentially facilitate criminal enterprise as a market phenomenon. This paper suggests how through comparatively analysing nominated critical market forces in the context of lucrative and recurrent criminal enterprises, common business decision-making may be predicted and thereby controlled beyond a law enforcement paradigm. In fact, the paper argues that when perverted law enforcement regulation operates as an inter-connecting market characteristic then it can have a similar influence over illegitimate enterprise that law enforcement may provide legitimate business.By establishing a richer and more enterprise-oriented understanding of crucial market variables, it becomes possible to refine control strategies at critical entry and exit points in the operation of clandestine crime businesses. The paper will challenge a comparative theorising of what makes crime business a good business, and how normative distinctions between illegitimate markets are made less convincing when positioned against an analysis of the interaction of critical market variables.     

Deterrence and avoidance

This paper explores the effects of public enforcement, in general, and punishment, in particular, on crime levels if offenders can engage in avoidance activities. Avoidance reduces the probability or magnitude of punishment. In general, offenders can reduce their expected punishment either by substituting legal activities for criminal activities (the deterrence effect) or by increasing avoidance activities. This paper shows that increasing the direct costs of crime – by either increasing punishment or enforcement efforts – does not necessarily deter criminal activity and may actually trigger increased crime if avoidance is possible. Furthermore, this paper shows that increasing the opportunity costs of crime (e.g. by subsidizing legal alternatives or through educational and vocational programs) reduces both crime and avoidance and thus, in this respect, is advantageous. The conditions for these outcomes are identified, the economic mechanisms are explained, and an underlying intuitive approach for these results is proposed.     

Organized crime and the business of migrant trafficking

The trafficking of migrants around the world hasbecome a multi-billion-dollar business for criminalorganisations. Over the last ten years, thousands ofmigrants have been moved illegally acrossinternational borders with the assistance ofprofessional trafficking organisations.The increasing number of people forced or willing tomove abroad as well as the restrictions placed onlegitimate migration systems have translated intoorganized crime. Around the world, traffickingorganisations have learned to take advantage of thisstructural inequality, creating sophisticated channelsof illegal migration while exploiting those forced orwilling to migrate.This article seeks to examine traffickingorganisations in light of the most recent theories andinterpretations of organized crime, that is theeconomic analysis of transnational criminalorganisations. With respect to the elaboration offuture countermeasures on national, regional andinternational levels, the aim of this article is toidentify more precisely the major organisational andoperational features of the migrant traffickingbusiness.The article begins with an introductory discussion ofthe economic approach to organized crime in part 1.Part 2 analyses the illegal market in which criminalorganisations, in particular traffickers, operate.This provides the working basis for the examination ofthe migrant trafficking organisation in part 3 of thearticle.     

Crime,youth gangs,and urban transition: The social dislocations of postindustrial economic development

On the basis of a multivariate analysis of quantitative data from all U.S. cities of 25,000 or more in 1970 and 1980, this paper investigates the impact of recent economic changes and population shifts on the levels of violent and property crime. Further investigation of a subset of cities yields information on the effect of these shifts for the development of youth gangs. The findings illustrate the criminogenic consequences of transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, where changes in technological conditions undermine the comparative locational advantages of cities as industrial centers and worsen economic opportunities for the unskilled urban poor. The results suggest that higher crime rates and more youth gangs are among the unintended consequences of the nation's patterns of postindustrial development.     

中国与东盟经济自由贸易区跨国经济犯罪及其控制策略研究

在中国与东盟经济自由贸易区的合作与发展不断深化和加强的进程中,制度的差异、发展的不平衡、特殊的地理环境等因素让竞争中出现了不法手段乃至犯罪手段,跨国经济犯罪即是其表现之一。跨国经济犯罪是跨国犯罪中最为常见且最为严峻的犯罪,是经济全球化最明显的负面影响。通过对跨国经济犯罪、中国与东盟成员国间跨国经济犯罪现状与原因的分析,进而探求中国与东盟成员国间控制跨国经济犯罪的有效策略。     

三十年来中国犯罪现象发展态势

改革开放近30年来,中国进入了新的历史发展时期,政治、经济、文化等各方面都发生了巨大的变化。随着市场经济的逐步确立与发展,影响犯罪的各种因素也不断突变,犯罪现象的发展变化亦出现了前所未有的新特点。犯罪率的急剧上升与高位徘徊并存,犯罪的地域重心逐渐发生偏移,犯罪主体日益多元化,新的犯罪类型不断涌现。本文即封改革开放以来中国犯罪案件的诸多特点进行考察,以期对犯罪预防政策的制定提供参考。     

Models of South-East Asian Organised Crime Drug Operations in Queensland

In 2002, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a report entitled Results of a pilot survey of forty selected organized criminal groups in sixteen countries which established five models of organised crime. This paper reviews these and other common organised crime models and drug trafficking models, and applies them to cases of South East Asian drug trafficking in the Australian state of Queensland. The study tests the following hypotheses: (1) South-East Asian drug trafficking groups in Queensland will operate within a criminal network or core group; (2) Wholesale drug distributors in Queensland will not fit consistently under any particular UN organised crime model; and (3) Street dealers will have no organisational structure. The study concluded that drug trafficking or importation closely resembles a criminal network or core group structure. Wholesale dealers did not fit consistently into any UN organised crime model. Street dealers had no organisational structure as an organisational structure is typically found in mid- to high-level drug trafficking.