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.     

Re-imagining crime prevention: controlling corporate crime?

While the discourses and practices of crime prevention are of increasing salience, few criminologists have sought the inclusion of corporate illegalities on such agendas. Relatedly, within criminology, there has been a diminished tendency to think in idealistic, utopian and emancipatory terms. This paper is one small attempt to think in precisely such terms.¹ But it is not an exercise in pure imagination. In particular, the paper makes extended reference to Finland, where recent experience suggests that corporate crime prevention may be feasible, under certain conditions, albeit subject to certain limitations. Thus we consider both the desirability and the feasibility of corporate crime prevention intruding upon the generally narrowly constructed terrain of ‘crime prevention’. We begin with a critique of some of the key aspects of crime prevention discourses – at both theoretical and practical levels – with a particular emphasis upon the extent to which these are both more appropriately and usefully applied to corporate crime prevention, before going on to discuss corporate crime prevention ‘in action’, through a focus upon recent developments in Finland. In a concluding section, we consider various aspects of both the desirability and feasibility of corporate crime prevention.     

Predictive crime mapping

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have emerged as a key tool in intelligence-led policing and spatial predictions of crime are being used by many police services to reduce crime. Break and entries (BNEs) are one of the most patterned and predictable crime types, and may be particularly amendable to predictive crime mapping. A pilot project was conducted to spatially predict BNEs and property crime in Vancouver, Canada. Using detailed data collected by the Vancouver Police Department on where and when observed crimes occur, the statistical model was able to predict future BNEs for residential and commercial locations. Ideally implemented within a mobile GIS, the automated model provides continually updated predictive maps and may assist patrol units in self-deployment decisions. Future research is required to overcome computational and statistical limitations, and to preform model validation.     

Organized cross-atlantic crime

There is concern about penetration of organized crime in the legitimate business. This penetration can take various forms, ranging from a complete take over to a veritable symbiosis between crime-enterprises and the legitimate industry. This paper describes the interaction between crime-enterprises in the mineral oil market in the Unites States and North-western Europe. It pictures the landscape or moral decay, lack of supervision by law enforcement and the spread of systematic fraud in a branch of industry which has become ripe for infiltration by organized crime. The paper reveals that organized business crime is not just a concern for the United States of Europe alone. If the entrepreneurial landscape has similar features and there are possibilities of personal bridgeheads organized business crime obtains crossborder, transatlantic dimensions. The paper questions the selective attention of law enforcement to easily recognizable crime and the morally dubious attitude of legitimate industry taking advantage of the profitable offers by criminal entrepreneurs.     

Beyond crime seriousness: Fitting the punishment to the crime

This paper presents an exposition of how the factorial survey approach may enhance empirical assessments of the complex judgment principles involved in public views of just punishments for convicted offenders. Ratings of the appropriateness of sentences given across 50 typical crimes obtained from a household sample (N=774) of the Boston SMSA and several special-interest samples in 1982 are examined in three alternative ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression equations. These analyses show there is not a one-to-one direct relationship between public perceptions of the seriousness of criminal acts and desired sanctions. Crime seriousness is modified by the characteristics of the offenders and victims and by the consequences of the crimes. Preferred punishments also vary in severity by demographic, experiential, and attitudinal characteristics of the persons who make the judgments.     

浅谈职务犯罪

职务犯罪主要表现是贪污贿赂、挪用公款等经济犯罪和渎职侵权犯罪，是腐败现象最突出的表现。中国的现代化建设和改革开放事业取得了巨大成就，然而腐败现象的黑影也在不断扩展，当前职务犯罪呈蔓延之势，给整个社会带来极大危害。本文分析了职务犯罪的内涵、特徵、危害及其成因，并从思想上、立法上、完善监督机制和加大打击力度等方面深入探讨预防对策，从源头上预防和治理职务犯罪。     

Policing organized crime

Conclusions Recent criminological research in the Netherlands underscores the fact that organized crime is embedded in society and the overall picture makes it clear that police emphasis on a crime fighting model of the police, based solely on criminal law will not be entirely effective. Therefore, the Twente police force developed a new strategy of policing organized crime in their region. This strategy is based on criminological knowledge and on the approach of community policing: preventive, pro-active and integrated actions taken by various partners of the police in order to reduce illegal activities of organized crime groups. This strategy, however, can only succeed when two conditions are satisfied. First, this approach can only function in an open democratic society in which numerous public and private organizations and the public feel responsible for the emergence of organized crime in their environment. Secondly, the police force and their partners must be (relatively) free of corruption. This implies that this strategy can only be effective in societies in which organized crime has not deeply penetrated democratic institutions and business organizations. Respectively Commissioner of Police and head of the Division Organized Crime of the Twente Police force and Professor of criminology and director of the International Police Institute (IPIT) at the University of Twente. PO Box 217, 7500 EA Enschede, The Netherlands. We would like to thank Alexis Aronowitz of the IPIT for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for her grammatical corrections, as well as the members of the editorial committee for their suggestions for improvements.     

浅谈青少年犯罪

青少年犯罪已成为一个比较严重的社会问题，对于搞好社会治安综合治理，预防、减少犯罪，确保社会治安稳定，具有十分重要的现实意义。本文结合当前社会生活中发生的一些实际问题，分析研究青少年犯罪的特点及成因，就如何采取有效措施，开展预防教育，作一些浅析和探讨。