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The primary purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of educational attainment on crime rates across 33 Indian states over the period 2001 to 2013. This paper also examines the role of various macroeconomic, socio-economic and demographic factors in determining the variation of crimes in India.

First, this paper provides a representative theoretical model and discusses the possible relationship between crime and education. Second, the paper applies a dynamic panel data (DPD) model to extract more precise, unbiased and reliable estimates of the effect of education in abating different crime rates. The main advantage of using the dynamic panel model is to address the problem of endogeneity in some regressors and capture the time persistent effect of education on crime.

Empirical findings reveal that a 1% increase in gross enrolment ratio leads to the reduction of total crime by 8%. However, a unique finding identifies a positive association between tertiary education and economic crime. This finding further goes against the general belief that criminals tend to be less educated than non-criminals.

This paper recommends that instead of punishment and mandatory law enforcement for offenders, increase in government expenditure and different educational attainment ratios can go a long way to combat crime in India, which has posed a serious threat to the stability of society. Furthermore, utilizing the information on offenders' educational attainment in examining the crime rates can be a future research agenda for policymakers.

This study contributes to the empirical debate of ‘crime-education nexus’ by examining the role of education on crime in India. This study is the first of its kind that focuses on the aspects of crime and education more recently and investigates the relationship between crime and education due to the recent changes in educational attainment ratios and crime rate.

This paper aims to provide reflective practice insights on the use of the participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre as crime prevention education and research tools with young people and young adults through a social learning theory lens.

Four independent case-studies showcase World Café and Forum Theatre methodology. World Café events investigated new psychoactive substances (NPS) awareness with young hostel users and college pupils (N = 22) and race hate crime with school and college pupils (N = 57). Forum Theatre events explored loan shark crime with college and university students (N = 46) and domestic abuse crime with young hostel users and college and university students (N = 28). Anonymous survey data produced qualitative and descriptive statistical data.

Learning impacts from participatory crime prevention education and research events were evidenced. Participatory approaches were perceived positively, although large group discussion-based methodologies may not suit all young people or all criminological topics.

Participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre are vehicles for social learning and crime prevention with young people and young adults; eliciting crime victimisation data; and generating personal solutions alongside wider policy and practice improvement suggestions. Whilst World Café elicited greater lived experience accounts providing peer-level social learning, Forum Theatre provided crucial visual role modelling for communicating safeguarding messages.

Given that how crimes are perceived by the general public influences their sense of community safety, police priorities and offending behaviour, and in light of little, if any at all, attention being paid to the determinants of such perception, the purpose of this paper is to examine their predictive value.

In total, 150 English participants with diverse backgrounds (78 males and 72 females – mean age: M=24.3; SD=5.44) completed surveys on their perceived increase in violent, sexual and benefit fraud crimes, taking into account theoretically and empirically underpinned factors, like age, income, number of days unemployed in the last three years, number of years spent in formal education and machiavellianism.

The multiple regression results suggest that participants with less formal education and less income were more likely to see a rise in violent crime. They also suggest that participants with less formal education and longer history of recent unemployment were more likely to see a rise in sexual crime. It turned out, however, that the recent history of unemployment was not a significant predictor of the perceived rise in benefit fraud – only a high machiavellianism score was.

This quantitative research paints a complex picture that could be complemented by follow-on qualitative studies.

The overarching message from this relatively modest study, therefore, which is part of a much larger and more complex ongoing research project, is to inform the public on crime in approachable and mass data-driven ways rather than leaving this to sensation-driven and selective scenario-focused media.

Increasing people's sense of community safety is likely to improve their general well-being, community cohesion and trust in others without necessarily inclining them to take personal risks and falling victim to crime due to ignorance and gullibility. This, in turn, might help guide crime prevention strategies and contribute to the actual reduction in crime levels and safer communities.

Not only does this article offer insight into people's perception of different crimes, addressing an important and neglected research deficit, but is also cautiously proposes the need for more professional education of the public about crime figures.

A minimum dropout age (MDA) requires potential dropouts to stay in school until graduation. Most countries have an MDA at least 16. An MDA greater than 16 requires potential dropouts to stay in school for at least one more year, which immediately reduces their available time and opportunities to commit a crime in the community. This study aims to examine how a higher MDA reduces crime in the community. The authors then show a higher MDA helps potential dropouts to become an entrepreneur.

The authors develop an economic model of crime that shows how an MDA greater than 16 affects contemporaneous juvenile crime in the community. Considering an MDA of 16 as a benchmark MDA, a hypothetical example with simulated data on the USA is used. The authors then show how a higher MDA offers a financial opportunity for the professional development programs.

An MDA greater than 16 reduces crime in the community. Reducing crime allows preventing social and monetary cost on juvenile delinquency. This economic efficiency offers a financial ability for adolescent training and other development programs and thereby reduces unemployment and other adverse consequences of the society.

Unlike previous studies, the authors develop an economic model of crime that shows a hypothetical relationship between an MDA and contemporaneous juvenile crime in the community. A higher MDA allows more financial ability for juvenile development programs in high school to improve the entrepreneurial skills.

In addition to being a violation of human rights, the practice of child labor can be related to criminality against young people. In view of this, the hypothesis tested in this article was that child labor aggravates youth homicide through educational level.

This study used annual data for the 26 states plus the Federal District for the period 2001 to 2014. To do so, the authors used the iterated feasible generalized least squares (IFGLS) estimator under the seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) model.

The results showed that child labor positively affects the homicide of young people, showing education as a transmission channel through which the effect is materialized. The general conclusion, given this, that work is an alternative for children not to enter the world of crime due to its socializing character, cannot be sustained.

This evidence provides input to the formulation of policies and programs to eradicate or slow child labor. In addition to the social and economic rise of individuals, it is important to emphasize the role of education (human capital) in explaining economic growth.

So far, there is no record of national research that sought to empirically assess the effect of child labor on crime, in particular, on the homicide of young people, considering education as a transmission channel, and this assessment is the contribution of the present study to the economic literature on crime.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0163

The evolution of digital technology has changed the way in which we, as a global society, socialise and conduct business. This growth has led to an increasing reliance on technology, much more interconnectedness and in turn, an expansion of criminal opportunities, known now as “cybercrime”. This study aims to explore the experience of victimisation, perceptions of cybercrime and use of online crime prevention strategies.

The study involved a survey of a representative sample of the adult Australian population. The study sample was made up of 595 Australian adult participants. The study seeks to better understand how previous victimisation, perception of cybercrime prevalence and perception of harm caused by cybercrime are related to the use of online crime prevention strategies. It seeks to contribute to a body of work that has found that crime prevention education focused on increasing knowledge is limited in its effectiveness in reducing victimisation.

This study identifies key levers, in particular perceived prevalence and harm of cybercrime, as critical in the use of online crime prevention strategies by potential victims.

As such, this study provides an important evidence base on which to develop more effective online crime prevention education and awareness campaigns to reduce cybervictimisation.

The practical implications include the relationship between cybervictimisation and self-protective online strategies of potential victims and the development of more effective online crime prevention programmes.

The research takes a different perspective from much of the previous research, seeking to better understand how attitudinal factors (perceived prevalence of cybercrime and perceived harm of cybercrime) might motivate or influence the use of online crime prevention strategies by potential victims.

The literature on terrorism suggests a strong link between criminal offending and terrorism – the crime-terror nexus. Building upon a strain theory perspective, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that devalued socio-economic status (i.e. limited education and unemployment) and criminal past define the pool of people from which violent and terror offenders may be recruited.

The current study compares three sources of data on educational and employment characteristics of violent and terror offenders: Dutch statistical data (CBS) including the Police Recognition System (HKS) on violent criminals, the findings on jihadist networks and the open access on European terrorists.

The majority of Dutch violent offenders, foreign fighters and European terrorists have only completed secondary school (or lower) and were unemployed in the year of offending. Half of recent European terrorists had previously been involved in violent crimes and/or had joined jihadi groups abroad.

One limitation of the study concerns the exploratory use of secondary and open-access data. While it was impossible to establish causality with the current methodology, these findings highlight the background conditions under which violent and terrorist crime can originate, and suggest one of the mechanisms that shapes the crime-terror nexus. Future research would benefit from more work identifying the causal antecedents to terrorism.

Whether relative deprivation is a direct cause or merely an amplifying factor in criminal motivation needs to be scrutinized in future research. However, its consideration may have great implications for policy and law enforcement agencies.

An individual’s desire to improve status and personal significance by the virtue of illegal activity may be particularly salient in the context of cultural polarization, which manifests as decreased trust and loyalty toward national laws and institutions. Parallel to preventive and security measures, it may be worthwhile to encourage multicultural associations and community networks in support of mutual (interethnic and interreligious) understanding.

The paper explores one of the oldest factors that has been suspected of leading to terrorism in lack of economic or educational opportunity. However, the paper also offers a new perspective on how these factors may relate to participation in terrorism. Rather than claiming these factors directly cause terrorism, the authors take a strain theory perspective to argue that these strains induce fewer opportunities to engage in terrorism and provide individuals with the skills/strength to resist de-radicalization or counter-radicalization.

This paper uses data from 2010 to 2016 across 32 states and union territories to investigate the determinants of crime in India. Results indicate the significance of macroeconomic, demographic, socioeconomic and deterrence factors in accounting for various categories of crime.

Due to the evidence of heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence, linear regression with panel-corrected standard errors is implemented.

It has been found that among the macroeconomic factors, only GSDP per capita was found relevant in explaining total crime rates. However, the unemployment rate and price level are crucial in explaining some categories of crime. The demographic factor, that is, population density, socioeconomic factors, that is, income inequality, poverty rate, literacy rate exhibit important and significant relationship with crime rates in India. Further, out of the four deterrence factors, charge-sheeting rate, conviction rate, pendency in police cases are important in explaining various categories of crime rates in India.

While implications of some socioeconomic variables are consistent with those found in previous studies, literacy rates and deterrence variables were found to have a positive association with crime. In particular, in a developing country such as India, white-collar crimes tend to increase as literacy rates increase. This calls for implementing policies that lead to greater employment opportunities for the educated masses. This paper also sheds light on the relationship between deterrence factors and crime rates in India. Deficiencies in the legal and judicial system have been detrimental to the nation's ability to curb crime rates.

During its 230 year prison history, the United States has advocated various – and sometimes conflicting – purposes for incarceration. Each justification has rested on the tenets of some prevailing theory of human behavior (Akers & Sellers, 2008; Jones, 2008), which attempts to answer two recurring themes: why do some people commit crimes while others do not, and how should the criminal justice system, including the correctional system, respond to such behavior (Siegel, 2003; Winfree & Abadisky, 2010; Vito, Maahs, & Holmes, 2011). This chapter offers an overview of the general tenets of what is considered morally imperative when determining “right” from “wrong”; the four key criminological perspectives of crime, as well as the ontological assumptions, either explicit or implicit, within each hypothesis. Next, the authors discuss how these assumptions dictate society's response to crime and, more specifically, the type of punishment, rehabilitative efforts, or educational opportunities offered to those who violate society's laws (Bohn & Vogel, 2011). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the types of educational programs and therapies that have demonstrated the most promise at reducing crime and recidivism, as well as suggestions for improving current correctional practices.