Exploring infiltration behaviour by organised crime groups

Purpose This paper aims to provide a holistic view of infiltration behaviour by organised crime groups (OCGs), with a specific focus on the methods used to access the legal market, including factors that drive an organised crime group to pursue infiltration. The act of infiltration is examined as a business decision; therefore, factors such as the surrounding community, the availability of criminal opportunities and broader implications, are considered. Design/methodology/approach Initially, the concept of an organised crime group is explored by, where possible, identifying trends in behaviour and structure. The act of infiltration is dissected, including the infiltration behaviour of OCGs and their related decision-making processes. Findings Infiltration actions are complex; therefore, any countervailing combatting and preventative actions will need to follow suit. OCGs pursue infiltration only when deemed feasible and to their benefit in furthering their illicit actions. Criminal opportunities are pursued across the entire economic sector. When these groups participate in a legal market, their criminality infects the healthy market and leaves it ill and contagious to the rest of the licit economy. Originality/value Infiltration is organic, as it indicates growth or adjustment to changing market conditions. Criminal opportunities are widespread, and their creation is often unintentional–the legal economy casts a shadow. Combatting organised crime, entrenched in the lawful community, requires that the focus should be on the susceptibility of potential infiltration targets through the possible infiltration methods. Furthermore, a broader perspective is needed when considering the underlying motivation for infiltration–it may not only be to generate profit.

Solidary Neighbors? The Involvement of Middle-Class Communities in the Governance of Security and Disorder in Brazil

This study explores how residents govern security in two middle-class neighborhoods in Londrina, the fourth largest city in southern Brazil. Utilizing nodal governance theory, it analyses a security program called Solidary Neighbor ( Vizinho Solidário, in Portuguese) in both neighborhoods, in place since the early 2010s. Document analysis, direct observation, and interviews with 26 respondents comprising mostly residents, but also police officers, sex workers, and homeless people, were conducted to assess how the program works and what implications it has for the governance of public spaces. The findings show that the Solidary Neighbor program functions as a community governance node oriented toward reducing criminal opportunities with the use of technologies to monitor outsiders and displace sex workers and homeless people. The article concludes that particularly in contexts such as in Brazil, bottom-up security initiatives have the potential to produce hostile and exclusionary public spaces.

Global Crime Patterns: An Analysis of Survey Data from 166 Countries Around the World, 2006–2019

Objectives This article explores the merits of commercially-based survey data on crime through cross-validation with established crime metrics. Methods Using unpublished data from 166 countries covering the period between 2006 and 2019, the article describes the geographical distribution across global regions and trends over time of three types of common crime, homicide, and organised crime. The article then explores possible determinants of the geographical distributions through regressing prevalence rates against indices of poverty, inequality, proportion of youth, presence of criminal opportunities (wealth and urbanisation), and governance/rule of law. Results The results show that African and Latin American countries suffer from the highest levels of various types of crime across the board, followed by countries in Asia. European, North American and Australian countries experience intermediate or relatively low levels of most types of crime. Levels of common crime have dropped or stabilized globally except in Africa where they went up. Homicides have fallen almost universally. Trends in organised crime are diverging. Conclusions Dimensions of governance emerged as powerful determinants of levels of all types of crime. Important determinants of common crime besides governance were poverty, inequality, and proportion of youth. To some extent changes in these same characteristics of countries were found to be correlated with changes in levels of crime over the past fifteen years. The article concludes with a discussion of the study’s limitations and suggestions for further research.

Home Free

This book is about building credible science to address the challenge of criminal recidivism. It does so by drawing upon a unique natural experiment that presented an opportunity to witness an alternate reality. More than 625,000 individuals are released from prison in the United States each year, and roughly half of these individuals will be back in prison within just three years. A likely contributor to the churning of the same individuals in and out of prison is the fact that many released prisoners return home to the same environment with the same criminal opportunities and criminal peers that proved so detrimental to their behavior prior to incarceration. This study uses Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment for examining the question of whether residential relocation away from an old neighborhood can lead to desistance from crime. Many prisoners released soon after Katrina could not go back to their old neighborhoods, as they normally would have done. Their neighborhoods were devastated by a once-in-a-generation storm that damaged the vast majority of housing units in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina provided a rare opportunity to investigate what happens when individuals move not just a short distance, but to entirely different cities, counties, and social worlds. This study draws upon both quantitative and qualitative evidence to reveal where newly released prisoners resided in the wake of the Katrina, the effect of residential relocation on the likelihood of reincarceration through eight years post-release, and the mechanisms revealing why residential change is so important after release from prison.

Cyberbullying in Adolescence

The advent of the internet has revolutionized the way individuals conduct business, socialize, and search for information on any topic imaginable at any time. Nevertheless, with all its benefits, the internet also has a darker side for which new criminal opportunities have emerged and some traditional crimes have evolved and multiplied. One area of concern that has emerged since the advent of the internet is that of cyberbullying, a distinct type of deviant behavior that has attained worldwide attention from practitioners and scholars. This chapter examines cyberbullying as associated with the age, gender, race, and urbanicity of the victims versus the extent to which traditional face-to-face bullying took place within these same groups. Cyberbullying remains an elusive social problem for all because cyberbullying has been associated with school shootings, suicides, and other violence among adolescents. Discussion of the implications for practitioners and scholars will be included in that cyberbullying extends beyond the school grounds and well within the realm of public safety.

What about cyberspace (and cybercrime alongside it)? A reply to Farrell and Birks “Did cybercrime cause the crime drop?”

In this paper we question Farrell and Birks’ assertion of the emergence of cybercrime as an invalid explanation for the crime drop. Alternatively to the “cybercrime hypothesis”, we propose two non-exclusive hypotheses that highlight the essential role of cyberspace as an environment that has shifted criminal opportunities from physical to virtual space, which reflects on crime trends. The first hypothesis posits that the more time spent at home by many young people due to video games and online leisure activities, among other factors, could have had an impact on the juvenile crime drop. The second hypothesis states that the appearance of cyberspace has led to a shift in opportunities from physical space to cyberspace. This could have led to an increase in property-related criminal activity connected to the Internet to the detriment of physical crime which would not be reflected in the statistics. Both premises are supported by empirical evidence.

Pathways into organized crime: comparing founders and joiners

This paper outlines research on the engagement processes and pathways into organised crime (OC). In recent years research on OC has increased, however there is still little understanding of how individuals become engaged in OC, and specifically whether differences exist in engagement patterns between certain groups of OC offenders. A content analysis was undertaken on the auto/biographies of one-hundred OC offenders to collect data on engagement processes. Quantitative analysis was used to identify significant differences in the engagement processes between OC offenders who join (‘joiners’) or form (‘founders’) an OC operation. The results revealed that measures pertaining to risk-factors, criminal trajectories, turning points, criminal motivations and social influences in engagement statistically differed between the groups. It was concluded that ‘founders’ were influenced by short-term criminal opportunities and economic considerations towards OC engagement, whilst ‘joiners’ were impacted more so by long-term social dynamics arising from ties and exposure to OC, such as one’s parents being engaged in OC. Both groups however, directly engaged through social dynamics. The current study provides preliminary findings which increase academic and practical understanding of the OC fraternity, but also the findings offer a basis on which to target legal interventions. Additionally, the new knowledge may be instrumental for building theories of OC engagement. Specifically, it is theorised that the circumstances in how ‘joiners’ become engaged in OC represents a ‘contagion process’.

Cyberbullying in Adolescence

The advent of the internet has revolutionized the way individuals conduct business, socialize, and search for information on any topic imaginable at any time. Nevertheless, with all its benefits, the internet also has a darker side for which new criminal opportunities have emerged and some traditional crimes have evolved and multiplied. One area of concern that has emerged since the advent of the internet is that of cyberbullying, a distinct type of deviant behavior that has attained worldwide attention from practitioners and scholars. This chapter examines cyberbullying as associated with the age, gender, race, and urbanicity of the victims versus the extent to which traditional face-to-face bullying took place within these same groups. Cyberbullying remains an elusive social problem for all because cyberbullying has been associated with school shootings, suicides, and other violence among adolescents. Discussion of the implications for practitioners and scholars will be included in that cyberbullying extends beyond the school grounds and well within the realm of public safety.

Utilizing a Risk of Crime Measure for Recidivism Research: Moving Environmental Corrections Forward

The current study expands recidivism research by developing a risk of crime (ROC) measure rooted in environmental criminology, reflecting the risk of criminal opportunities, and lending itself to environmental corrections. Data were collected from a city in the Northeast region of the United States. The ROC measure was constructed through risk terrain modeling and reflected a parolee-specific neighborhood ROC. Conjunctive analysis of case configurations was utilized to explore how individual characteristics interacted with the ROC measure. Results indicated a relationship between parolees residing in an elevated ROC neighborhood and the likelihood of recidivism. The results were discussed in relation to how environmental criminology could be further integrated into environmental corrections, accounting for physical and social characteristics of the backcloth.