The Method of Action (Modus Operandi) in Property Theft: Topical Issues of Judicial Interpretation and Doctrinal Legal Thinking

The paper examines the methodological problems of understanding the method of committing theft in the doctrine, law enforcement practie and modern science of criminal law. The author analyzes such objective signs of theft as seizure, confiscation, circulation, and their relationship with other signs of theft. The author proves that the modern description of objective signs of the theft does not correspond to the realities of the theft as a tort infringing on property and obligations. The situations of qualification of actions related to the replacement of the owner (owner of the property) and causing damage to the owner or another owner are considered in detail, regardless of the fact of direct seizure or circulation of the stolen property (taking possession of it). It is stated that in order to avoid contradictions and fictions, law enforcement practice is forced to interpret “seizure of someone else’s property” too broadly and equate this feature with the fact of legal replacement of the owner (owner) of the property. The paper demonstrates the inconsistency of this situation and the fictitiousness of the rules for qualifying property crimes. The author concludes that it is necessary to correct the legislative description of the method of action in case of theft competing it with elements that would most fully cover all kinds of situations and would be universal. This takes place because today it is impossible to choose and fix a method of theft that would characterize a single criminal encroachment on bodily and non-corporeal material goods and would reflect theft as an act causing damage to the owner. Due to the fact that the mechanism of criminal encroachments on property and obligations is not the same type and has its own specifics, the reflection of the mode of action in property crimes should be differentiated.

Crime index trends and patterns in Kelantan

Crimes are a social nuisance and has become major anxiousness to the society where it involves the safety of the people in a country. This paper provides crime index overview in Kelantan from 2017 to 2019 that consists of both violent crimes and property crimes. The violent crimes involve murder, rape, robbery and voluntarily injury cases. Meanwhile, property crimes include house break-in theft, vehicles theft and other theft (pickpocketing, snatch theft and etc.). The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between age, gender, ethnic and district with the crime index. In addition, the objective is to identify and get better understanding of the most common crime index and also to identify which area has the highest crime index in Kelantan. A total of 5,569 cases were reported within this three-year period and the data were collected from Kelantan Contingent Police Headquarters. The descriptive analysis, spearman’ rho correlation and multiple regression analysis were performed, and the findings were then illustrated via graphs and tables. The major results have shown that Kota Bharu has the highest crime index and age, gender and district has significant relationship with crime index.

«Digital» property crimes: issues of criminalization and legislative regulation

This article shows that an important role in the legal protection of the digital economy is played by modern criminal law, which is designed to form a system of legal mechanisms to ensure the protection of society from digital property crimes. The new mechanism of criminal legal protection should ensure effective counteraction to both real and potential criminal threats in the emerging digital reality. It is proved that in the context of digitalization, there is a need for a radical reform of Chapter 21 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Alternative directions for improving the criminal law provisions on liability for crimes against property are proposed. One of the author's options is to build new separate structures of property crimes property abuses and other violations in the field of information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet. Another is the allocation of an independent group of property crimes in the field of the digital economy within the framework of Chapter 21 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and accordingly the division of the chapter into two groups: property crimes against property (theft of other people's property, illegal possession of a vehicle, destruction and damage to other people's property) and crimes against property in the field of information and telecommunications networks.

Vehicle Anti-Theft Technology

Property crimes are said to hover around 10 million annually. Of this, vehicle theft tops the list and often occurs in all parts of the world. In response to a Right to Information (RTI) query made by The Indian Express shows that a total of 2,801 motor vehicle thefts took place in 2020 Mumbai, where in 1,085 cases account for 39 per cent of the total cases detected. Of the total 2,801 vehicle theft cases, 2,019 cases were of two-wheelers, 185 were four-wheelers and the remaining 623 cases were thefts of other vehicles like rickshaws, tempos etc.. The methods currently involved in vehicle theft detection such as buzzers and alarms have become cognizant to everyone including the burglars and effortlessly override the system and steal the vehicle. This paper proposes a system presenting a mechanism to mitigate the possibility of vehicle thefts. The system provides security by sending an SMS message as soon the vehicle is moved or crosses Geo-Barrier grid without knowledge of owner and also provides the owner with set of actions that can also be taken. System also offers location updates timely to the registered devices through SiM7600E. New features can be periodically be added hence making it future proof.

A Case Study of Non-Violent Property Crime Victimisation in a South African Urban Residential Neighbourhood: Exploring the Excessive Use of Force and Destruction Caused by Burglars to Gain Entry to Victims' Properties

Commentators frequently report on the high prevalence of violent crime in South Africa and often label the country as one of the most violent in the world, with a subculture of violence and criminality. This paper focuses on a different perspective, reporting on the excessive use of force and destruction caused by offenders in South Africa to gain entry to victims' properties in the execution of non-violent property crimes, in a particular residential burglary. Literature on property crimes has been considering the aggravating circumstances of violent property crimes. However, the use of excessive force and destruction caused by burglars to gain access to victims' properties in the execution of residential burglary remains relatively untested in the literature. In this light, the purpose of this study is to describe the unprecedented levels of force used and destruction caused by burglars to gain access to victims' properties during residential burglary victimisation in an urban residential neighbourhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. A qualitative research approach is followed. A case study design was used to select an urban residential neighbourhood in Johannesburg as a case study. A data set of (n = 1 431) crimes were purposively selected by means of non-probability sampling. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. This paper offers valuable insight into the forceful and destructive conduct of burglars in the selected neighbourhood and contributes to the body of knowledge by providing an improved understanding of target hardening as a preventive measure against residential burglary victimisation as well as on methods of entry used by burglars in incidents of residential burglary. The results of reported non-violent property crime victimisation incidences by this community's neighbourhood watch scheme suggest that residential burglars in the selected neighbourhood are uncharacteristically forceful and ravage in their actions since they frequently revert to extreme use of force and destruction, disproportionate to the crime perpetrated. It is concluded that this radical degree of force used and destruction caused by residential burglars to gain entry to victims' properties in the execution of non-violent property crimes is not typically associated with residential burglary as compared to countries internationally.