Criminal Gangs Research Articles

The Strategic Role of Clerics in Curbing Juvenile Criminal Gangs and Radicalization in Kenya's Coast Region  

The Strategic Role of Clerics in Curbing Juvenile Criminal Gangs and Radicalization in Kenya's Coast Region  

기후온난화와 기후변화가 범죄양상에 미치는 영향과 초국가적 환경범죄의 등장

This article aims to study on the impact of global warming and climate change on the criminal patterns and the meaning of the transnational environmental crime. Nowadays human activities have caused global warming and climate change through the use of fossil fuel and this finally generates the environmental harm or environmental crime. Unlike the past, the recent environmental crime happens not in one country or region but in the international or global level. Recently owing to the development of traffic vehicles like airplane or ship or car, some crimes are committed across the nations: for example, illegal trade of timber, arms, animals or polluting substances, so the environmental crimes are committed across the nations or global level, therefore it is called as the transnational environmental crime. The transnational environmental crime(TEC) means the environmental crime which happens across the nations or global level, and it is not easy to estimate the size of the TEC, so a lot of criminal gangs or organized crime are connected with the TEC. For example, criminal gangs or organized crime deliver the waste or E-waste like cellular phones or computers to the poor country illegally, are concerned with the illegal dumping of polluting substances, do the illegal trafficking of timer or animals like tigers or rhinos. However, each nation or UN has not proper countermeasures to the TEC, so the size of TEC is growing over the years, and more kinds of TEC is created by the criminal gangs or organized crime. Therefore it is needed to make a proper means to prevent TEC in the global level.

Punishing people through property: Strategic task force inspections at the nexus of criminal and civil legal systems

In this article, we investigate a largely unexplored policing mechanism: Strategic Task Force (STF) inspections in Chicago. This process exists at the intersection of civil and criminal legal systems: properties affiliated with criminal drug or gang activity are swept by building inspectors and police officers, with the explicit purpose of finding code violations and prompting civil legal action against the owner. Using two datasets of inspected buildings, we demonstrate that those who own properties targeted by the STF more often face financial and legal hurdles such as foreclosures, ownership transfers, and property restrictions. This finding coheres with qualitative court data, which demonstrates a pervasive punitive attitude in STF cases. We argue that STF inspections amount to a denial of criminal due process for residents in communities of color, punishing alleged offenders via a civil process with much more flexible procedural standards. Our analysis of punishing people through property highlights the need for expanding standards of criminal due process to civil contexts to guarantee defendants’ substantive rights.

Challenges of Crime in City Slums: A Case Study of Mathare Slum in Nairobi County, Kenya

This study focuses on the challenges of crime within Mathare slum in Nairobi County, Kenya. It has been necessitated by the continued concern on the constant presence of crime within the slum areas of Nairobi. Although there have been studies carried out on various challenges in slums, this study provides a detailed analysis of the security challenges faced by Mathare slum dwellers. The study sought to examine five major thematic areas; major causes of crime in Mathare slum, types and trends of crime within Mathare slum, crime reporting, criminal gangs in Mathare slum and fear of crime within Mathare slum. Questionnaires and key informant interviews were used to obtain data from respondents who included Mathare slum residents, police officers, area chiefs and community policing committees’ chairpersons from the thirteen villages in Mathare slum. The challenges of crime in Mathare slum were found to be a combination of multiple factors working in congruence to influence the commission of crime.

Anti-Money Laundering by Group-Aware Deep Graph Learning

Anti-money laundering (AML) is a classical data mining problem in finance applications. As well known, money laundering (ML) is critical to the effective operation of transnational and organized crime, which affects a country's economy, government, and social wellbeings. Financial services organizations facilitate the movement of money and have been enlisted by governments to assist with the detection and prevention of money laundering, which is a key tool in the fight to reduce crime and create sustainable economic development. In the application of AML, user identity and financial behavior data are widely used to detect laundering transactions. In recent years, an increasing number of money laundering activities have been conducted by organized criminal gangs while most existing works still treat the actions of each account as independent identity behavior without considering the group-level conspired interactions. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a group-aware deep graph learning-based approach for organized money-laundering detection. In particular, we design a community-centric encoder to represent the nodes and attributes in user transaction graphs and derive the adjacent gang behaviors. Then, we devise a scheme of local enhancement to accommodate nodes with similar transaction features, which are aggregated into gangs for downstream detection. Extensive experiments on the real-world dataset from one of the largest bank card alliances worldwide show that our proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both offline and online modes, showing the effectiveness of money laundering detection with group-aware deep graph learning.

Understanding medical aspects of violent crimes in Sweden's region Skåne: a retrospective cross-sectional design of the ViCS project.

While there has been a reduction in specific homicide categories in Sweden, the last decade has witnessed an increase in the overall rate. The escalation is predominantly linked to heightened gun violence associated with criminal gangs. As a result, Sweden faces an extreme rate of shootings and firearm-related homicides, constituting one of the most severe instances across Europe. However, comprehensive scientific studies on this phenomenon are lacking. This paper presents the design of the Violent Crimes in Skåne (ViCS) project, which aims to investigate violent crimes requiring hospitalization or causing death in Sweden's region Skåne from a medical, forensic, and criminological perspective. The project aims to examine the epidemiology and trends of violent crimes, injury profiles, treatments, patient outcomes, causes of death, and victim demographics. Using a retrospective cross-sectional design, ViCS will examine trauma by violent crimes from 2000 to 2019. Data will be sourced from several institutions, including hospital records from nine emergency hospitals, and the National Board of Forensic Medicine Agency. The project aims to study medical and criminological aspects of violent crimes, primarily focusing on assaults involving firearms, sharp weapons, blunt instruments, kicks, punches, and other types of assault like strangulation. Data analysis will involve descriptive and inferential statistics. ViCS aims to contribute to the limited body of knowledge about victims of violent crimes in Sweden. The findings may inform evidence-based interventions in medical, forensic, and criminological fields, potentially enabling targeted prevention strategies and improvements in emergency care for victims.

Mid-level Illicit Drug Supply in a Small English City: Sellers’ Perspectives and Experiences

This article examines the experiences of eight mid-level drug suppliers operating in a small English city, through use of qualitative interviews. Building on the literature relating to social supply and drift into ‘real dealing’, we explore whether the mid-market for non-‘street’ drugs in this locale follows a continuation of these norms, or whether features that are prominent in recent explorations of UK drug distribution relating to increasingly aggressive marketing, and organised criminal gangs moving into markets in provincial towns, are present in the city’s market. Analysis encompasses suppliers’ experiences of ‘drift’ into commercial supply, pull factors for market involvement, approaches to marketing and customer service, ethical concerns in supply, and finally perceptions of market violence. We observe that the market, while retaining many features of social supply, nonetheless shows evidence of issues relating to emergent norms of altered distribution, notably market violence linked to establishing ‘lines’ in new locales.

The Issue of Crime Committed by Juveniles in Rural Areas

The problem of juvenile delinquency has gained much attention nationwide. In the domestic research field, however, there does not seem to be a comprehensive and robust exploration of juvenile delinquency in rural areas. This research examines the current situation of rural minor delinquency and explains the causes of the much higher delinquency rate than urban minor criminality in terms of both reality factors and psychological factors. The loose family connections and failed basic education may lead rural minors to detach from a stable psychological state and thus be more easily lured by the superior material life of criminal gangs and start committing criminal acts. Ultimately, the study proposes three suggestions: reshaping family intimacy; founding the psychological defense; and reducing recidivism. These suggestions may not substantially reduce the crime rate of rural minors, but at least should be the direction of improvement that ought to be pursued today. This study seeks to draw the attention of Chinese judicial and academic field to the crime of rural minors and gradually improve the current situation.

The Violence of Law-and-Order Politics: The Case of Law Enforcement Candidates in Brazil

This article analyzes the effects on violence of electing law-and-order candidates at the local level. It argues that law-and-order politicians embedded in the police will divert resources to favor their constituency, which in violence-prone areas could generate more murders. Using ballot names of council candidates in thousands of local elections in Brazil to accurately classify law-and-order candidates, it shows that the election of police law-and-order candidates causes more homicides. Moreover, georeferenced data on police activity and homicides show neglect in areas that did not support a winning police law-and-order candidate, despite these areas being home to the majority of individuals vulnerable to violence. This favoritism, however, is not present in places where preexisting local institutions make policing more transparent. Instead of persecution directed against minorities or the incapacity to battle criminal gangs, this research shows that surges in violence can be the result of typical forms of democratic representation.

Exploration of the Child Domestic Workers’ Lived Experiences in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This qualitative study, based on a phenomenological design, explored the lived experiences of child domestic workers aged 15 to 18 years in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Children in this age group are above the national and international legal minimum age for admission into light work. The findings of our study indicated that although domestic work is perceived by the child domestic workers as a method for impoverished children between the ages of 15 and 18 to earn money, get experience, and learn new life skills, it also entails loneliness, challenges in assimilating into an unfamiliar social context, and child sexual exploitation and abuse. Also, a significant number of CDWs originate from low-income, rural households, with financial poverty, children’s idleness after completion of primary school, and a desire for income serving as important antecedents for their entry into domestic work. The process of social construction of the concepts "a child" and "childhood" includes the idea of typification. Hence, in the Tanzanian socio-cultural atmosphere, domestic work for underprivileged youngsters may be a better alternative for survival than opting for other options like commercial sex work, remaining idle in financially precarious homes, working and living on the streets, and "panya road" (children's criminal gangs). In addition to addressing poverty, ensuring light (domestic work) for children under 18 years, and acknowledging that childhood and its roles differ depending on the sociocultural atmosphere, researchers and policymakers should pay attention to these children's best interests, socio-cultural realities, and their perspectives and worries regarding this phenomenon in a quest to developing research-driven interventions and policies.

Impacts of Mining on the Environment in West African Sahel: A Review

Mining activities have led to the depletion of over 577.15 km² of forest area in the West African Sahel zone. These have destroyed the habitats of mammals, including elephants and giraffes, as well as economic trees and grass species, and polluted ground and surface water. In addition, mining activities are responsible for degrading more than 1,000 acres of farmland. Even though mining is destroying the environment, it has accounted for exports of €211,468,13, €247,034,485 and €275,720,817 in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, respectively, between 2014 and 2015. It is also a lever of sustainable environmental management, as in Senegal, by providing mining social funds for mining communities and employing over 450,000 people in Niger. Furthermore, mining companies promote land restoration activities in the West African Sahel, such as China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) promoting tree plantations in Niger. Nevertheless, the mining in the region will continue to serve as the breeding ground for criminal gangs and terrorist groups unless a radical approach stabilises the insecurity. The degradation of farmlands and forest reserves or protected areas requires re-evaluation and full enforcement of the existing laws and regulations to achieve sustainable mining for the needed development in the West African Sahel region.

Characteristics of acid attacks involving children in India.

Aim: To examine the characteristics of acid attack survivors who were aged ≤16 years at the time of the assault. Methods: Case files from the Chhanv and the Laxmi Foundations in India were accessioned for cases of acid attacks involving children and adolescents (≤16 years). Details of the age, sex, reason for the attack, injuries sustained and possible outcomes were recorded. Results: Ten cases were identified that involved eight girls (aged 3-16 years) and two boys (12 and 14 years). The head and neck were the primary targets in all cases. The primary reasons for the attacks involving adolescent girls were punishment for refusing sexual advances from older males and family violence/child abuse. The two male victims were assaulted as part of property dispute and gang violence. Penalties varied greatly with prison sentences (when handed down) ranging from <1 year to 10 years. Conclusion: The number of cases of paediatric acid attacks appear small, with motivations for the attacks including responses to spurned sexual advances, domestic violence/child abuse, criminal gang activities and ostensibly at random. Nongovernment organisations are vital in the rehabilitation of victims. It is of concern that dissemination on social networks and publicity through the media may lead to an increase in number of cases.

Maritime Insecurity at Lake Victoria, Homa Bay County

This research article examines the significance of maritime security, as one of the most recent axioms of international relations and diplomacy. It focuses on the socioeconomic factors that contribute to maritime insecurity along Lake Victoria's Homa Bay shores. In order to determine the research outcome, a qualitative research approach and an exploratory research design were used in unveiling the problem under consideration. Individuals and organizations/institutions from the Homa Bay’s Lake Region site were the target population. The research article has employed the purposive sampling technique and the saturation principle to obtain a sample size of 36 participants: 12 for in-depth interviews and 4 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) of 6 members each. The study also used qualitative interviews, focus groups, and observation to collect data. According to the findings, the main Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing issues in Lake Victoria, Homa Bay County are unauthorized fishing, criminal gangs and pirates, encroachment by foreign fishers, employment of minors/children as fishers, use of prohibited gears and fishing methods, and fishing young, endangered, and protected fish species. Furthermore, IUU fishing is endangering fish stocks in Lake Victoria's Homa Bay County. In its results findings, the research article recommends that more patrol officers guard the waters in order to prevent illegal fishers and criminal gangs from roaming freely.

Illegal slaughter of sheep for “smokies” production and for the Muslim sacrifice of Qurbani in the UK: animal welfare and food safety implications

Purpose It is the expectation of Halal consumers that the meat they buy in retail shops and restaurants are ethically and legally reared and slaughtered in approved premises to protect animal welfare and public health. While this may be the case in multinational and well-established supermarkets due to due diligence on the part of retailers, there is evidence to suggest that some independent retail shops and ethnic restaurants in the UK partake in selling meat from illegally slaughtered animals. It is a crime that involves many players, but usually masterminded by rural entrepreneurs, including rogue farmers who supply the animals for illegal slaughter and further processing into smokies, or as part of the Islamic festival of Qurbani, in makeshift abattoirs. The purpose of this paper is to highlight illegal slaughter of sheep for the Halal market and how these impacts on food integrity and animal welfare.Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines the legality of slaughter in accordance with UK animal welfare and food safety legislations. The documentary research approach is adopted to examine available information on the activities of organised criminal gangs in the production of smokies and their possible involvement in Qurbani fraud.FindingsThis paper demonstrates the involvement of some rogue farmers who are facilitating the smokies trade and illegal slaughter of sheep during the Qurbani sacrifice. It is worth noting that while these illegal activities occur in the Halal sector, the perpetrators are not always Muslims. The processing of illegally slaughtered sheep takes place in unhygienic conditions which is of food safety, public health concern and may violate the religious rules around slaughter.Originality/valueIllegal slaughter for the Muslim sacrifice of Qurbani is underreported, this paper aims to highlight the animal welfare and food safety aspects of this type of slaughter, in addition to those slaughtered for smokies production.

Assessing the impact of escalating attacks on soft targets by criminal gang: A modelling viewpoint using bifurcation analysis

The emerging threat of criminal gangs in society has severe consequences on the socio-economic well-being of individuals. To examine the impact of morally upright individuals and attacks on soft targets (i.e., vulnerable members of the society) on the coexistence dynamics of the society, we employ a system of ordinary differential equations (ODE) where individuals in the community are allowed to mix and interact. In the co-dimension one bifurcation analysis, we discover the emergence of supercritical and subcritical Hopf bifurcation, transcritical bifurcation, and saddle–node bifurcation of cycle. To understand how these different attractors interact and mediate a crime-free society, we conduct a co-dimension two bifurcation analysis (i.e., by using the morally upright individuals (h1) and attacks on soft target (e) as our bifurcation parameter). The interplay between morally upright individuals and attacks on soft targets shows the presence of a global attractor (i.e., Generalized Hopf bifurcation), which serves as a synchronization centre for the model. Several studies have reported the emergence of stable limit cycles in the criminal gang model. However, we discover a transition from stable to unstable limit cycles when the attacks on soft targets are considered under distinct coexistence factors. This study revealed that morally upright individuals and attacks on soft targets positively affected the coexistence dynamics of society. Furthermore, we observed that an unstable limit cycle is a causative factor for chaotic dynamics in the non-linear system. We further noted that the positive effect of morally upright individuals plays a crucial role in mediating a stable and crime-free society. The study concluded that the recruitment rate of susceptible individuals to the criminal gang has little consequence on the peaceful coexistence of society if the society maintains high morality.

Understanding the dynamic and microscopic traits of typical Ethereum accounts

As the most ecologically active cryptocurrency platform, Ethereum has attracted the attention of many researchers. Leveraging its fully public transaction data, most existing analysis models all account interactions as a network and explores it from a static and global perspective. However, their work ignored the investigation of dynamic and microscopic features of accounts. Therefore, we conduct the first work about these features of different kinds of accounts on Ethereum. We select six account types on Ethereum, including exchanges, phishing, etc. Then we characterize and compare the dynamics of their transactions. Next, we construct a transaction ego network for each account, and investigate the network features from the perspective of microscopic structure. Experimental results show that different kinds of accounts have their own traits in terms of transaction features and properties of ego networks, which greatly contributes to understanding their roles. Additionally, there are obvious differences between normal accounts and illegal accounts in some characteristics such as transaction neighbors and interaction patterns. Moreover, we observe that criminal gangs may be participating in phishing scams. Finally, based on the conclusions of the account analysis, we design a variety of account features and use them for the account classification task. The experimental results prove that the dynamic and microscopic features we proposed are beneficial to distinguish different types of accounts. We believe our research can provide reference value for account classification tasks in Ethereum and other blockchains.

ANALYSIS OF GUILLERMO LASSO'S GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL TO COMBAT THE HIGH RATE OF INSECURITY IN THE COUNTRY AND ITS EXISTING LEGAL FRAMEWORK

This research analyzes the proposal of Guillermo Lasso's government to combat the high level of insecurity in Ecuador. In recent months, insecurity in Ecuador has increased in cases of crime and violent death, especially in cases of hired killings in the country.Different official studies define this moment in history as the "new wars" that several countries in the region are going through. There are no hierarchical and vertical structures in the new wars as in wars against conventional armies. The new structure allows "various leaders to make decisions in an agile and decentralized manner, alliances between the most diverse organizations, and this element makes them so difficult to fight". Organized crime also encompasses a large number of actors linked to different activities. Criminal groups such as Los Lobos, Lagartos, Chone Killers and Latin Kings, and other small criminal gangs, manage to group in a sort of corporation to join forces. While in the "old wars," the objective was the appropriation of territory, nowadays, this territory is conquered through the political control of the population.The Government of Guille Lasso proposes four axes:The first is the containment of the levels of violence, for which the preventive, investigative and intelligence axes will be activated.2.- The second point is to activate Police Intelligence to remove the organizations dedicated to the micro-exchange of drugs from anonymity. The government points out that small and large-scale drug trafficking is the leading cause of violence in the area.The third point of the plan is dismantling large criminal organizations that generate violence. For this purpose, the special units and tactical groups of the National Police will be used.Finally, work will be done on sustainability, for which the empowerment and participation of the community are fundamental. Uniformed officers will make plans to strengthen relations with citizens to prevent organized gangs from occupying areas of the cities.

Suburban and Rural Gang Presence: Preempting Violence in Response to This Shifting Threat for Hospitals

The threat of gang violence spilling over into healthcare settings has become a reality in communities of all sizes. In particular, many people still perceive suburban and rural areas as being havens from significant organized crime when they may actually be places where criminal gang activity and violence is less detectable from law enforcement. Additionally, lesser populated regions of the nation often have small and sometimes underfunded police departments, which can make those communities vulnerable and attractive to criminals trying to avoid larger cities with more sophisticated gang units. To deal with the potential for gang violence in the hospital setting, there is a need to understand the basics of the gang culture, related behaviors, and the continuing gang threat. The keys to a successful campaign against gang violence in a hospital setting are training and education of security and clinical staff, including coordination and cooperation with law enforcement, and proper reporting procedures and protocols.

Región Arequipa: conflictividad social y problemática medioambiental

The present study seeks to identify the social and environmental conflicts that are active and latent in the Arequipa Region in the present AF-2022.The prospective phase was used to build and describe images of the future, in order to reduce uncertainty. The purpose is to explore, create and test alternative scenarios to manage risk in the future.It can be perceived that there is a relationship between illegal activities in the Arequipa Region with environmental problems, in addition to the situation of conflict in the region; a history of corruption in previous conflicts can be evidenced, which has increased due to acts of corruption by public officials, likewise it can be seen that these issues are related to social conflicts in the region and with activities that affect the environment ambient.Corruption aggravates the situation of social conflicts and pushes the population to violence, the regions and localities with the highest rates of corruption should be monitored, as well as the presence of political actors with extreme pro-violent ideologies. The IIAA and the PNP must anticipate actions through adequate intelligence and the management of essential resources for their actions. Regarding the presence of criminal organizations and gangs, work must be done in coordination with the Public Ministry, in order to neutralize them.

Criminal street gangs and domestic sex trafficking in the United States: evidence from Northern Virginia

Criminal street gangs and domestic sex trafficking in the United States: evidence from Northern Virginia