The prosecution of Chinese organized crime groups: the Sister Ping case and its lessons

This article analyzes the investigation and prosecution of contemporary Chinese criminal organizations through the study of one major human smuggling case: the trial of “Sister Ping.” Data were obtained from media reports, court documents, and from interviews with parties familiar with the case. It is argued that modern human smuggling groups such as the one run by Sister Ping are informal and decentralized organizations against which the RICO statute may be of little use.

Clans,politics and organized crime in Central Asia

This paper investigates the role of transnational organized crime in the democratisation process in the Central Asian area. It examines the inherent connections that exist between the leading tribal families, political elites and organized crime, and explores how criminal networks have proliferated in society and consequently in politics. The complete absence of a ruling élite and striking economic issues left unsolved were the legacy that Soviet rule would leave to the newly independent Central Asian Republics. After the fall of the former Soviet Union other, more profitable forms of transnational organized crime flourished. According to the official statistics of the UNODC and the American State Department, 92% of the world’s heroin is produced in Afghanistan. Of this, around 65% is smuggled into Europe and America along the Silk Road, and therefore through the five Central Asian Republics and Russia. High levels of corruption in Central Asia heavily affect political and economic life. The economies of the region have progressively become dominated by criminal activity with smuggling, trafficking and other activities linked to transnational organized crime as the major source of income. Central Asia’s strategic location makes this a global security concern.

Conversations with Russian mafiosi

Open interviews and unplanned conversations with criminals are an important part of ethnographic research in criminology. This paper presents an analysis of conversations with members of Russian criminal groups. An attempt is made to explore the value of these informal interviews, the danger of informal contacts with criminals, and the reliability of the information received.

Arson and the Special Part

This commentary on Michael Cahill’s Grading Arson argues that Cahill’s analysis inevitably leads to three possible conclusions. First, arson does not belong in criminal codes. Second, crimes of manner do not belong in criminal codes. And, third, the special part needs serious reconsideration. Although Cahill is reticent to draw any of these conclusions, this commentary urges Cahill to embrace all three.

Deterrence and Individual Differences Among Convicted Offenders

Conflicting evidence exists on how criminal propensity moderates deterrent effects, and there is little empirical evidence on this issue from relatively experienced offenders. This study tested how variation in criminal propensity (operationalized as “low self-control”) moderates deterrent effects in a sample of convicted offenders in New Jersey’s Intensive Supervision Program in 1989 and 1990. Offenders’ perceptions of the risks and consequences from violating ISP were associated with whether they successfully completed ISP. Moreover, lower self-control did not diminish, and if anything, enhanced these deterrent effects.

Criminal victimization in contemporary China: a review of the evidence and challenges for future research

The rapid economic growth in China over recent decades has been accompanied by higher levels of crime, but there have been few studies of the Chinese experience of criminal victimization. A recent victimization survey of a representative sample of households in Tianjin represents a major effort to fill this gap in the literature. The present paper reviews the research based on the Tianjin survey along with other studies of crime and criminal victimization in China that have been published since 1990. We summarize the major findings, discuss the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies that have been applied, identify the limitations of the research to date, and offer suggestions for future research.

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Illicit arms trafficking and the limits of rational choice theory: the case of the Balkans

Organized crime is often conceptualized as a business enterprise formed by actors motivated by profits. The Balkans represents an ideal case for testing the extent to which assumptions about the image of actors involved in illegal arms trading can be extrapolated to the macro-level of analysis. Focusing mainly on public discourse, this paper points to several thematic categories of illicit arms trafficking: i) profit-oriented arms trafficking involving organized crime groups ii) trafficking of arms for the purpose of arming criminal-terrorist formations and iii) state-sponsored illegal arms trafficking. Although economic incentives appear strong in many cases, other cultural, social and political issues also frame the illicit arms market in the region. We argue that both understanding and policing organized crime should also embrace the non-economic nature of this type of criminal behavior.

Criminal Exploitation of Online Systems by Organised Crime Groups

This article considers how information and communications technologies (ICT) can be used by organised crime groups to infringe legal and regulatory controls. Three categories of groups are identified: traditional organised criminal groups which make use of ICT to enhance their terrestrial criminal activities; organised cybercriminal groups which operate exclusively online; and organised groups of ideologically and politically motivated individuals who make use of ICT to facilitate their criminal conduct. The activities of each group are then assessed in relation to five areas of risk: the use of online payment systems, online auctions, online gaming, social networking sites and blogs. It is concluded that the distinction between traditional organised crime groups and the other two groups—cybercriminal groups and ideologically/politically motivated cyber groups—is converging, with financially-motivated attacks becoming more targeted. Legislation will need to adapt to deal with new technological developments and threats that organised criminals seek to exploit.

The Costs to Criminal Theory of Supposing that Intentions are Irrelevant to Permissibility

I attempt to describe the several costs that criminal theory would be forced to pay by adopting the view (currently fashionable among moral philosophers) that the intentions of the agent are irrelevant to determinations of whether his actions are permissible (or criminal).

Legislating for Your Own Good: Criminalising Moral Choice. The Modern Echoes of the Victorian Vaccination Acts

Victorian vaccination legislation has important echoes for the present age in the dilemma over how to promote compliance with government-endorsed scientific and medical public health strategies for the welfare of the community in a context of growing popular mistrust of such initiatives, in terms of their likelihood to confer benefits as well as their possible negative impacts on individuals. Victorian experience of dealing with the issue of ‘conscientious objection’ to policy initiatives seen as intruding into the area of individual moral choice, especially parental choice for children, is invoked to suggest better ways of comprehending the present resistance to take-up of the MMR vaccine, and its wider implications; as well as commenting on the role of the media.

Why Criminal Law: A Question of Content?

I take it as obvious that attempts to justify the criminal law must be sensitive to matters of criminalization—to what conduct is proscribed or permitted. I discuss three additional matters that should be addressed in order to justify the criminal law. First, we must have a rough idea of what degree of deviation is tolerable between the set of criminal laws we ought to have and the set we really have. Second, we need information about how the criminal law at any given time and place is administered, since the law in action is bound to differ radically from the law on the books. Finally, we must have some basis for speculating what life would be like in the absence of a system of criminal justice—if the state ceased to impose punishments.

To Discipline and Publish: Scottsboro and Narratives of Delinquency

With the economics of racism of the 1930s and 1950s American South in mind, our essay explores the relationship between the act of writing and institutional penology. Taking an obscure, but visceral autobiographical account by Paterson and Conrad (Scottsboro Boy, Garden City Doubleday, 1950), we examine how discipline, punishment, and institutional identity emerge out of publishing, or, as Foucault put it, “the power of writing.” Narratives of delinquency born out of a racialized penal economy tend to resist attempts to tame the criminal, making institutional survival a productive discourse, and its articulation, a unique revolutionary act.

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Support for Harsh Criminal Sanctions and Criminal Justice Beliefs: A Social Dominance Perspective

Much of the criminal justice literature indicates that people’s support for harsh criminal sanctions such as the death penalty is strongly related to their beliefs about deterrence and their beliefs about retribution. In this paper, using social dominance theory as our organizing framework, we expand upon this literature by showing that social dominance orientation (SDO) is also related to support for harsh criminal sanctions, as well as to deterrence and retribution beliefs. In addition, we show that the relationships between SDO, on the one hand, and support for various forms of severe criminal sanctions, on the other, are mediated by deterrence and retribution beliefs.

An evaluation of the UK’s anti-money laundering and asset recovery regime

This paper describes the UK’s anti-money laundering and asset recovery laws and the aims and objectives behind the regime since the introduction of the Proceeds of Crime Act in 2002. It then evaluates the regime in terms of the amount of criminal assets recovered, its application against organised crime and its impact upon the price of illegal drugs.

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Researching the use of force: the background to the international project

This article provides the background to an international project on use of force by the police that was carried out in seven countries. Force is often considered to be the defining characteristic of policing and much research has been conducted on the determinants, prevalence and control of the use of force, particularly in the United States. However, little work has looked at police officers’ own views on the use of force, in particular the way in which they justify it. Using a hypothetical encounter developed for this project, researchers in each country conducted focus groups with police officers in which they were encouraged to talk about the use of force. The results show interesting similarities and differences across countries and demonstrate the value of using this kind of research focus and methodology.

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Complex Harmony: The Military and Professional Models of Policing

This article discusses the importance of the military model throughout police reform, and how it has coexisted with, rather than been supplanted by, the professional model. Early reformers chose the military upon which to structure their concept of the urban police. That concept was refashioned into the professional model as the background of the reformers changed. This new model then replaced the military model in criminal justice literature, public vernacular, and police self-image, although the military model continued to exist under the radar. Today the “militarization of the police” is a major criminal justice topic, but its recent visibility is actually an ongoing part of the original reform ideal.

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Drug markets and the selective use of violence

Drug markets and violence are often presented as inextricably linked. Yet, the use of organized violence by trafficking networks against each other and against the state is not uniform. Insights into the selective use of violence lie in disputes between crime groups over control of lucrative distribution networks and market share. Insights into the use of violence against the state lie in the efforts by criminal justice personnel to curtail the drug trade and the political goals pursued by trafficking organizations. This article discusses these arguments in the context of cocaine markets and the Americas before turning more extensively to methamphetamine in the USA and especially Japan. The latter one, understudied by scholars, offers a challenging plausibility probe for arguments addressing the selective nature of organized violence in drug markets.

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Using social network analysis to target criminal networks

Using social network analysis (SNA), we propose a model for targeting criminal networks. The model we present here is a revised version of our existing model (Schwartz and Rouselle in IALEIA Journal, 18(1):18–14, 2008), which itself builds on Steve Borgatti’s SNA-based key player approach. Whereas Borgatti’s approach focuses solely on actors’ network positions, our model also incorporates the relative strength or potency of actors, as well as the strength of the relationships binding network actors.