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.     

“State ineffectiveness in deterring organized crime style homicide in Mexico: a vicious cycle”

Institutional weaknesses in the criminal justice system (limited court capacity and the increasingly sophisticated armament of splintering drug trafficking organizations) limit the effectivity of Mexican states to deter organized crime style homicide. Court capacity, expressed by increasing sentencing rates in states where the oral court system was institutionalized, remains insufficient against the post-2006 organized crime related homicide epidemic. The illegal arms market, combined with long-standing deficits in firepower between organized crime and municipal police forces, limit the state’s capacity to alter the arms balance toward policing forces. Taken together, limited court capacity and the tactical imbalance of weapons held by drug trafficking organizations create a vicious cycle which continually perpetuates state ineffectiveness to deter and punish organized crime style homicide.

     

“Striking out” as crime reduction policy: The impact of “three strikes” laws on crime rates in U.S. cities

During the 1990s, in response to public dissatisfaction over what were perceived as ineffective crime reduction policies, 25 states and Congress passed three strikes laws, designed to deter criminal offenders by mandating significant sentence enhancements for those with prior convictions. Few large-scale evaluations of the impact of these laws on crime rates, however, have been conducted. Our study used a multiple time series design and UCR data from 188 cities with populations of 100,000 or more for the two decades from 1980 to 2000. We found, first, that three strikes laws are positively associated with homicide rates in cities in three strikes states and, second, that cities in three strikes states witnessed no significant reduction in crime rates.     

Organized crime, the militarization of public security, and the debate on the “new” police model in Mexico

After the recognition in Mexico of a situation characterized by violence involving both non-state actors (mainly drug lords) and the state apparatus, the present research critically analyzes both the national security strategy adopted by President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012), which is based on the process of the militarization of public security, as well as the “new” police model proposed by the executive power that seeks to professionalize law enforcement agencies.     

The 2012 CLSR-LSPI seminar on privacy,data protection & cyber-security – Presented at the 7th international conference on Legal,Security and Privacy Issues in IT law (LSPI) October 2–4, 2012, Athens

This has been a big year for privacy with so much going on within the EU regarding reform of data protection. What are the implications of reform here and what are the issues that concern us about the proposed new data protection regime contained in the proposed Regulation? We hear a lot about the ‘right to be forgotten’. How is that possible in the digital age within the online world? And what can be done about the big players who stand charged with the erosion of privacy viz Facebook, Google, Skype & YouTube etc? How can the law keep up with technological change when the latter is moving so fast e.g. with RFID, Cloud and social networking? To what extent can data breach notification, net neutrality and privacy impact assessment help and how should the law approach issues of liability and criminality in relation to privacy? What is the state of play too in the relationship between privacy policy and state surveillance and, given its implications for privacy, what obligations should governments adopt in response to cybersecurity regulation and data management? Is there a place for privacy self-regulation and if so in what respects and how effective are the Information Commissioners who often complain of being under resourced? In reviewing the way privacy law has emerged do we now need a completely new approach to the whole issue? Has the law crept into its present form simply by default? Do we need some new thinking now that reflects the fact that law is only one dimension in the battle for privacy? If so what are the other factors we need to recognise?