Crime In Europe Research Articles

Інституційний вимір боротьби Європейського Союзу з транснаціональною злочинністю як однієї з основних загроз європейській безпеці

The article investigates the role of the leading institutions of European Union in the fight with transnational crime. It was determined that the problem of transnational crime occupies one of the central places in the field of European security. This is due to the fact that the overall level of crime in Europe in recent years has increased several times compared with the beginning of the XXI century. It was found that today transnational crime is becoming a serious obstacle on the way of building stability and sustainable development. It is nothing less than terrorism, illegal immigration affects the state of European security, creating the new center of a danger in Europe. It is proved that each institution has its own specific of struggle, but the unifying factor is that all of them are working on the same thing – the elimination of the threat in order to increase the level of security in Europe in general and in EU in particular. Substantiated the thesis that it is important to further developing of close and constructive cooperation between the main European institutions, as well as mutual exchange of information and data regarding the recent changes and the manifestations of transnational crime. This will give an opportunity to strengthen the European security system, as well as implement common practical methods of counteraction. It was determined that the actualization of the practical component in the framework of EU institutional dimension in the future will contribute to strengthening European.

Inspecting the European crime prevention strategy towards incivilities

In recent years the crime prevention (CP) policies of many EU countries have been expanded up to including the regulation of uncivil and disorderly behaviour, and have been implemented at the local level through measures that have often excessively constrained individuals’ rights and freedoms. By drawing on the analysis of EU policy documents retrieved in the database EUR-lex, this article investigates whether the European CP strategy has also focused on the regulation of incivilities. Furthermore, it inspects whether any attention has been paid at the EU level to how local authorities have exercised their CP powers in the field of urban disorder. In the conclusions, the emerging results are compared against the backdrop of the existing literature on the legitimacy of incivility regulation, with the aim to draw conclusions informing the EU CP strategy targeting nuisance and its regulation.

The European Union and the Police of the EU Member States in the Beginning of the 21st Century: Some Results and Prospects

Some results of the European Union development over the last decade are considered. At this background the organization of the police activities in the EU member states to engage the non-governmental non-commercial organizations, other community structures in combating crime in Europe is analyzed. At that, the basic objective of the EU countries police cooperation is ensuring the high level of personal protection and security for the European citizens. Some new crime prevention approaches of the police in the EU member states, particularly, “community policing”, “neighbor policing”, etc., are analyzed. Special characteristics and national specific features of criminal policy and of the sphere of the transnational organized crime prevention in several European states are studied. The study involved multiple and diverse information sources, including, primarily, normative legal documents of the European Union and of its governing structures, guidelines on the police functioning both in the European Union as a hole and in its particular member states. The legal normative documents of another European body, namely, of the Council of Europe are analyzed as well. Also, some results and prospects of international cooperation within the EU framework and beyond to overcome both national and transnational crime are considered. Keywords: Community, Crime, Governing System, International Cooperation, Non-Governmental Non-Commercial Organizations, Police, The European Commission, The European Union

The Routledge Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime in Europe. Edited by Judith van Erp, Wim Huisman and Gudrun Vande Walle (Routledge, 2015, xxi+573pp. £125 hb)

The Routledge Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime in Europe. Edited by Judith van Erp, Wim Huisman and Gudrun Vande Walle (Routledge, 2015, xxi+573pp. £125 hb)

From the Sublime to City Crime ed. by Maurizio Ascari, Stephen Knight

Maurizio Ascari, and Stephen Knight, eds. From Sublime to City Crime. Monaco: LiberFaber, 2015. Pp. 297. 20 [euro]. From Sublime to City Crime comprises twelve essays--not including editors' co-authored introduction--covering a period in development of British, American, and European crime fiction that snugly overlaps what we conventionally style period of international Romanticism. Several of these were originally published in a thematic issue of Italian journal La Questione Romantica, co-edited by Maurizio Ascari and Stephen Knight under title Crime and Sublime. Among British writers, volume ranges from William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft through Thomas De Quincey and James Hogg to G. M. W. Reynolds, author of sprawling serialized novel The Mysteries of London, whose first weekly number appeared in October 1844. Their American cohort is represented by Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe, while Honore de Balzac, Eugene Sue, and a handful of pioneering Scandinavians draw our attention to continental developments. The editorial intention ostensibly embracing all of these essays, aside from their shared generic and historical focus, is to reveal gradual precipitation of what came to be called a subgenre of crime fiction epitomized by whodunnit and traditionally distinguished by its foregrounding of investigator's (inevitably successful) problem-solving abilities, out of a vigorous but more heterogeneous category of popular fiction founded on compelling--i.e., sublime--power of sheer mystery and terror of crime itself. The ideological underpinnings of this literary-historical understanding are not, in themselves, new, and can be traced back to Foucault's Discipline and Punish and its critical progeny, like D. A. Miller's The Novel and Police. In words of editors Ascari and Knight, Out of disciplinary procedures came a hero. He, at times she, resolved threats through skill, application, and occasionally courage.... Fulfilling ideological destiny of classic bourgeois fiction ... detective knotted loose ends of individualistic anxiety for isolated cerebral workers of late capitalism (9-10). What Ascari and Knight add to this by-now standard account of detection's disciplinary impact is an eye for persistence of as the underground river of later detective fiction that despite--or, perhaps more accurately, because of--its repression by Enlightened forces of rational investigation enduringly remains dynamo of excitement and anxiety that both drives narrative of crime and insistently demands its euphemisations (10). That, at least, is announced thesis of this collection, and while it is not, for various reasons, consistently realized by contributions that follow, it does provide a useful vade mecum. The contributions themselves--by scholars spanning globe from Slovakia to Canada and Italy to Australia--are uneven in rigor as well as depth, but all provide useful entrees for Romanticists looking to engage with ever-growing body of criticism on crime fiction and its governing poetics. The essays are arranged in roughly chronological order from 1790s to 1840s, moving at same time from Anglophone trans-Atlantic sphere to continent and back at last to England. Among those scholars familiar to British Romanticists, Maurice Hindle, editor of Penguin's groundbreaking 1988 edition of Caleb Williams, kicks things off with a close examination of Godwin's debts to Edmund Burke's Sublime and Gothic tradition, setting loose parameters for discussing these topics in essays that follow. Here sublimity under investigation is almost invariably of Burkean variety, linked to terror and largely interchangeable with the Gothic. The contributors following Hindle include Alessandra Calanchi on Brockden Brown's aural sublime, Ascari examining element of power (104) that co-inhabits De Quincey's writings on murder and his Gothic revenge fiction, Struan Sinclair on Poe's superperceivers, Giacomo Mannironi on Balzac's debts to British Romanticism, Heather Worthington on Blackwood's fictions of physician/lawyer Samuel Warren, and Anna Kay on mid-century popular reception and sublime interpretation of real-life murderess Maria Manning. …

The European Union and the Police of the EU Member States in the Beginning of the 21st Century: Some Results and Prospects

Some results of the European Union development over the last decade are considered. At this background the organization of the police activities in the EU member states to engage the non-governmental non-commercial organizations, other community structures in combating crime in Europe is analyzed. At that, the basic objective of the EU countries police cooperation is ensuring the high level of personal protection and security for the European citizens. Some new crime prevention approaches of the police in the EU member states, particularly, “community policing”, “neighbor policing”, etc., are analyzed. Special characteristics and national specific features of criminal policy and of the sphere of the transnational organized crime prevention in several European states are studied. The study involved multiple and diverse information sources, including, primarily, normative legal documents of the European Union and of its governing structures, guidelines on the police functioning both in the European Union as a hole and in its particular member states. The legal normative documents of another European body, namely, of the Council of Europe are analyzed as well. Also, some results and prospects of international cooperation within the EU framework and beyond to overcome both national and transnational crime are considered.

Guardians Upon High: An Application of Routine Activities Theory to Online Identity Theft in Europe at the Country and Individual Level

Online fraud is the most prevalent acquisitive crime in Europe. This study applies routine activities theory to a subset of online fraud, online identity theft, by exploring country-level mechanisms, in addition to individual determinants via a multi-level analysis of Eurobarometer survey data. This paper adds to the theory of cybercrime and policy debates by: (1) showing that country physical guardianship (e.g. cyber security strategy) moderates the effects of individual physical guardianship; (2) introducing a typology of online capable guardianship: passive physical, active personal and avoidance personal guardianship; (3) showing that online identity theft is associated with personal and physical guardianship; and (4) identifying public Internet access and online auction selling as highly risky routine activities. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of studying country-level effects on online identity theft victimization.

Questioning preconceived notions about organized crime: an interview with Petrus C. van Duyne

Duyne is recognised as one of the leading experts in economic and cross-border crime in Europe. He worked for the Dutch Ministry of Justice and as a professor at the University of Tilburg. In 1999 he set up the Cross-border Crime Colloquium and this has met annually since then. It brings together experts on international organized (economic) crime to discuss the latest developments in empirical research, legislation and law enforcement with a geographical focus on Western, Central and Eastern Europe.

The analysis and containment of organized crime in Europe: an interview with Cyrille Fijnaut

This email interview with Cyrille Fijnaut was conducted during 2013 and 2014. It discusses Fijnaut’s background, influences, career and current thinking and activities from his early career in the Dutch police in the 1960s, through to his work as a criminologist for academia and governments. His main research interests are related to organized crime and terrorism, international police and judicial cooperation, comparative criminal procedure and police law, the history of European and American criminology and of policing in Europe, and police and judicial cooperation in the Benelux. In these fields he has written and edited some 75 books and published hundreds of articles in national and international journals and edited books. In 2004 he edited together with Letizia Paoli, Organized Crime in Europe: Concepts, Patterns and Control Policies in the European Union and Beyond. In addition he has worked in the last 20 years as an expert for a number of governmental and parliamentary committees of inquiry in Belgium and the Netherlands with regard to organized and professional crime problems and in relation to security issues. Currently he is working on a book on the future of police and judicial cooperation in the framework of the internal and external security policies of the European Union.

Transnational connections in European crime film series (1908–1914)

Abstract This article addresses the issue of ‘European popular cinema’ by discussing a very specific phenomenon, i.e. the crime series produced in the years immediately preceding World War I (e.g. Victorin Jasset’s Nick Carter, Viggo Larsen’s Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock, Ubaldo Maria del Colle’s Raffles, il ladro misterioso, Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas, George Pearson’s Ultus). On the one hand, the transnational circulation of these films is seen as the result of the development of the European cultural industries since the late nineteenth century; on the other hand, the rapid decline of this genre testifies of the historical peculiarity of this production. In particular, the popular heroic figure of the ‘gentleman thief’ seems to express at the same time the liberating, anti-hierarchial ethos of modernization and the dream of a quiet conciliation of the new and the traditional values: as a consequence, it might be regarded as a telling example of the economical, social and ideological transformations of that crucial phase in European history, when the development of the second industrial revolution and the first phase of ‘globalization’ pointed at the birth of a supranational sphere before the outbreak of World War I, which would temporarily stop this process.

How to Tackle (Organized) Crime in Europe? The EU Policy Cycle on Serious and Organized Crime and the New Emphasis on Harm

In 2010, the EU Council established a multi-annual policy cycle in order to 1) define priorities in the EU-wide “fight against serious international and organized crime,” on this basis 2) develop and 3) implement appropriate interventions to tackle the prioritized crime phenomena and 4) evaluate the results achieved in order to identify a new set of priorities for the following cycle. After a two-year trial cycle, the first policy-cycle started in 2013 and is due to last until 2017 (Europol, 2013: 9).

Book Review. Corruption and Organized Crime in Europe. Illegal partnerships, by Philip Gounev and Vincenzo Ruggiero (eds)

Book Review. Corruption and Organized Crime in Europe. Illegal partnerships, by Philip Gounev and Vincenzo Ruggiero (eds)

The role of education in determining the attitudes towards crime in Europe

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we investigate the relationship between education and attitudes towards offences and crime. The results suggest that in a European context years spent in education are positively associated with more permissive attitudes towards criminal behaviour.

Urban security in Europe: Translating a concept in public criminology

A key challenge for public criminology is the translation between concepts employed in policy discourse and those used by social scientists. Given that concepts constitute social problems and they can have multiple meanings for policy-makers and social scientists, then deliberation about what they signify matters in understanding how these actors can talk to, rather than past, one another in framing policy discourse about crime and revealing alternative policy agendas. This challenge is accentuated in the comparative context of European criminology, which is characterized by competing tendencies to generalize about problems of ‘Freedom, Security and Justice’ and to recognize the variegated problems and cultures of control across Europe. In this context, the presumption of universality can mistranslate concepts of crime and control by obscuring contextual insight, while the presumption of particularity can inhibit cross-cultural dialogue and deliberation. The paper explores this challenge in relation to the concept of ‘urban security’, which is prevalent in the policy discourse on social crime prevention, particularly in Central and Southern Europe. To establish the provenance, prevalence and significance of this concept, the paper discusses findings from a policy Delphi that structured deliberation about the meaning of urban security among criminologists sampled from the European Society of Criminology and policy-makers sampled from the European Crime Prevention Network. It concludes with reflections on the value of deliberative methods, such as the policy Delphi, for the cross-cultural validation of criminological constructs in comparative research.

More sinned against than sinning? Perceptions about European migrants and crime

The article draws on perceptions of those working in professional capacities with European migrants in one area of the UK, to explore understandings about the relationship between European migrants and crime at the local level. The qualitative study informing the article involved semi-structured interviews with representatives from the criminal justice system (CJS) and community representatives. A key finding of the study was that both CJS and community representative respondent accounts were largely congruent. European migrants were more likely, in respondent accounts, to be victims, rather than perpetrators, of crime. Much of the predominantly ‘low-level’ crime associated with European migrant offending was reported to be largely a function of cultural difference and based on misunderstanding of UK law and CJS processes. The article concludes with some implications for the enculturalization and education of new migrants and the fostering of better understanding between European migrants and CJS agents and processes.

Is the Citizen Driving the EU's Criminal Law Agenda?

This contribution will try to investigate to what extent the constitutional changes as brought about by the Lisbon Treaty in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) – and as witnessed in the case law of the Court of Justice – have been driven by genuine concerns for the individual. In other words, this chapter explores the extent to which the individual could be said to drive the agenda in contemporary EU criminal law and policy. Of particular relevance for such an examination is the recent Stockholm Programme, which stipulates the goals to be achieved within the AFSJ, and as such is the follow-up to the previous Hague Programme. The Stockholm Programme claims to be serving and protecting the citizen as well as placing citizens at the heart of EU activities. However, if one looks more closely at this Programme, the importance of increasing the effectiveness of existing European crime policies seems to overshadow other objectives such as the protection of human rights at the EU level. The contention of this chapter is that the EU embraces a number of principles in theory that in practice may be rendered nugatory.

Little Red Riding Hood Crime Films: Critical Variations on Criminal Themes

European and North American crime films since the 1990s reflect changing cinematic styles but also hardening political discourses around criminal responsibility and growing public fears of random violence and predatory strangers. The narrative structure and imagery of “Little Red Riding Hood” conventionally warns about the latter dangers, but can also offer a lesson in self-reliance and the necessity for private action to forestall them. The familiar story provides a malleable cultural referent for a number of films elucidating social, political, and criminological shifts concerning issues of crime, justice, and crime control around the turn of the millennium.

History And Global Criminology: (Re)Inventing Delinquency in Vietnam

How might historical analysis enrich global criminology? More specifically, could histories of European crime contribute to understandings of social change in present-day Asia? How can evidence bases generated through distinct research practices - those used by historians, criminologists and criminal justice consultants - be combined? This article explores these challenges through an analysis of contemporary Vietnamese concerns about youth crime and a critique of local and international policy makers' efforts to address these. It argues that historically informed analysis can enrich understanding in four key ways. The first is that this kind of analysis suggests how French colonialism and its legacies have shaped Vietnamese criminal justice practice through (in)direct policy transfer. The second is that it can help to defuse current moral panics by locating Vietnam's rising youth crime within a familiar historical pattern. The third is that it can broaden the narrow evidence base available to those searching for youth justice interventions that 'work'. Finally, a historical view can expand existing spaces for difficult but critical dialogues around human rights in a reforming authoritarian state with its own traumatic past.© The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved.

Crime in Europe and the United States: dissecting the ‘reversal of misfortunes’

Contrary to common perceptions, today both property and violent crimes (with the exception of homicides) are more widespread in Europe than in the United States, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. We label this fact as the ‘reversal of misfortunes’. We investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes, incarceration, abortion, unemployment and immigration on crime. For this we use time series data (1970–2008) from seven European countries and the United States. We find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime. Our results suggest that a tougher incarceration policy may be an effective way to contrast crime in Europe. Our analysis does not provide information on how incarceration policy should be made tougher nor does it provide an answer to the question whether such a policy would also be efficient from a cost-benefit point of view. We leave this to future research. — Paolo Buonanno, Francesco Drago, Roberto Galbiati and Giulio Zanella

The Ripple Effect: A Randomized Trial of a Social Norms Intervention in a Danish Middle School Setting

The paper reports on the results of an experiment on a brief social norms intervention in fifth and sixth grade Danish school classes. The intervention took the form of a randomized experiment, in which Treatment pupils were presented with data on their own misperceptions regarding cigarette smoking among their peers, followed by group discussions about normative misperceptions. Follow-up (n = 349) was conducted a year after intervention. Results. Significant differences between Treatment and Control in misperceptions were found, not only regarding smoking, but also regarding alcohol intake and drug misuse. No significant differences were found in actual smoking prevalence, but other types of risk behavior, including different types of criminal offenses, were significantly less prevalent in the Treatment group, as were the numbers of self-reported situations in which pupils had given in to (imagined) peer pressure. Conclusion. The experiment demonstrated the existence of a ripple effect: the correction of misperceptions regarding one type of risk behavior influenced other types of misperceptions and risk behaviors as well. It is hypothesized that an important contributory factor to the success of the experiment is the absence of any moral judgment in the intervention. In 2006, the experiment was given the European Crime Prevention Award.