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The purpose of this study is to explore spatiotemporal factors that affect the empirical analysis of whether crime rates in buffer areas surrounding abandoned properties transferred to a Land Bank that differed among three regimes: before transfer, during Land Bank stewardship and after disposition and whether those differences were associated with differences in relative crime activity in the neighborhoods in which they were located.

This study analyzed crime incidents occurring between 2010 and 2018 in 0.1-mile buffer areas surrounding 31 abandoned properties sold by the Land Bank and their neighborhoods in which those properties were located. Using Copulas, researchers compared concordance/discordance in the buffer areas across the three regime states for each property and approximately matched time periods for associated neighborhoods.

In a substantial number of cases, the relative crime activity levels for buffer areas surrounding individual sold properties as measured by the Copulas shifted from concordant to discordant states and vice versa. Similarly, relative crime activity levels for neighborhoods shifted from concordant to discordant states across three matched regimes. In some cases, the property and neighborhood states matched, while in other cases they diverged. These cross-level interactions indicate that criminal behavioral patterns and target selection change over time and relative criminal activity. The introduction of Copulas can improve the reliability of such models over time and when and where they should be customized to add more granular insights needed by law enforcement agencies.

The introduction of Copulas can improve the spatiotemporal reliability of the analysis of criminal activity over space and time.

Spatiotemporal considerations should be incorporated in setting interventions to manage criminal activity.

This study provides support for policies supporting renovation of abandoned properties.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this research is the first application of Copulas to crime impact studies. As noted, Copulas can help reduce the risk of applying intervention or enforcement programs that are no longer reliable or lack the precision provided by insights into convergent/divergent patterns of criminal activity.

This paper aims to suggest alternative suspicious activity analyses to improve the focus of financial institution reporting to law enforcement and to identify some limitations in the current practice.

This paper employs the consideration of US and Financial Action Task Force policies and text sources of suspicious activity reporting in the anti-money laundering context in light of how the reports are used. Furthermore, there is consideration of confidentiality and privacy constraints on public and private sector in assessing strategies to make the reporting process more effective and aiding the discovery and investigation of crime.

The current suspicious activity reporting process takes advantage of the business acumen of financial institutions to identify unusual or unexplained behavior that may assist law enforcement in criminal investigations and prosecutions. It is successful in that regard. However, the process has not been tuned to identifying criminal behavior through systematic feedback. As an alternative to feedback, analysis of criminal organizations vis-à-vis the transactions that flow through a reporting institution is suggested as a means to creating better tuning. The analysis could be accomplished either by law enforcement or by select institutions; but in either case, hurdles of confidentiality and/or privacy would have to be overcome.

Creating a process for law enforcement and/or reporting institutions to map known criminal activity on a transaction set would allow a new assessment of the role of financial institutions in this regard, and may allow policymakers to reassess whether the financial institutions’ efforts currently required would be more productive if redirected to focus more on criminal as opposed to merely suspicious activity.

There is an evolving literature on criminal entrepreneurship which situates it as a sub-topic of the organised crime literature and either mythologies and elevates the criminal entrepreneur to Mafioso status or ascribes it to being an activity carried out by criminal cartels; or else it trivialises and minimises it as being ‘White-Collar Criminality’. In reality, entrepreneurship pervades everyday criminal life as it pervades the everyday practices of policing. In this chapter, the author acknowledges the existence of a ‘Crimino-Entrepreneurial Interface’ populated by a cast of criminal actors including the ubiquitous ‘Businessman Gangster’. These criminally entrepreneurial actors operate within a specific milieu or ‘Enterprise Model of Crime’ and operate alongside the legitimate ‘Entrepreneurial Business Community’. Within the two conjoined systems, there is a routine exchange of interactions either parasitical or symbiotic and these coalesce to form an ecosystem of enterprise crime in which it is not only the ubiquitous criminal entrepreneur who is present but a veritable cast of entrepreneurially motivated criminal actors. As well as the established business community there is a parallel, alternative community which is situated in the so-called ‘Criminal Areas’ where the traditional criminal fraternity carry out their nefarious entrepreneurial activities. Within such areas, an underclass exists which provides the criminal workforce for organised crime. The traditional criminal ecosystem is the natural habitat for the police, and it is around this activity that police are traditionally organised. A perpetual cycle of crime is set up which requires policing, but this leaves an unpoliced void which the entrepreneurial criminals exploit. It is necessary to understand the criminal places and spaces exploited by Organised Crime and what roles other criminal actors and facilitators play in the enterprise model. It is also necessary to understand the so-called ‘Perverse Model of Policing’ which distorts and magnifies the true scale of the problem and to appreciate how Serious and Organised Crime corrupt and infiltrate the legitimate ‘upperworld’ before one can understand the true scale of entrepreneurialism in policing and criminal contexts.

This paper aims to study the role of money laundering in the system of modern crime.

The methodology of this research will include the study of quite obvious relationships, which in themselves do not need special substantiation today, namely, money laundering and terrorism; money laundering and corruption; money laundering and organized crime.

The following methods are used in the research process: studying the sentences of the courts of the Russian Federation related to the conviction of persons for money laundering; analysis of national judicial statistics and statistics of international organizations related to money laundering; a survey of 96 experts (law enforcement officers, scientists specializing in the study of combating money laundering, government officials whose powers include activities to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism).

Based on the results of the study, a number of conclusions were made. In particular, at present, in view of the built-up effective system of measures to control the income received as a result of certain types of criminal activity (corruption crime, organized crime, economic crime), money laundering has taken a leading role in the structure of modern crime.

Although most aetiological theories of crime assume that offenders are a distinct subset of the population, there is evidence that many illegal acts are committed by people who have no convictions and are therefore not regarded as criminals. The question consequently arises as to whether there are aspects of illegal actions that set convicted offenders apart. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To answer this, a 45-item self-report questionnaire was administered to two samples (males 15-29 years): 185 prisoners and 80 young men without convictions.

The results draw attention to a distinguishing psychological dimension of instrumentality operating across the range of offence forms. Convicted offenders are more likely to commit crimes for direct gratification with intent when compared with the sorts of illegal activities that non-convicted respondents report they have done.

Careful matching of convicted criminals and those without convictions is extremely difficult. Future research that explores other non-criminal samples would therefore be of value.

Interventions with people who commit crimes need to carefully distinguish between those who are determined criminals and those whose activities are more likely to be part of an opportunistic culture.

The results challenge conceptualisation of criminals and criminality as something always distinct from those without convictions. It thus has implications for what theories of crime should seek to explain. The significance of instrumentality also give further force to the legal emphasis on men's area.

The purpose of this article is to provide an empirically based description of how the Internet is exploited by different types of organised crime groups (OCGs), ranging from Italian mafia-style groups to looser gangs.

The article relies on a dataset collected from mid-2011 to mid-2013 and, specifically, on semi-structured interviews to law enforcement officials and acknowledged experts in Italy, the UK, the USA and The Netherlands; judicial transcripts; police records; and media news.

This article provides an account of the main scope for which the Internet has been used for various criminal activities traditionally associated with the organised crime rhetoric, first and foremost, cross-border trafficking activities. This study also discusses some current legal and policy approaches to deal with OCGs operating online.

This contribution addresses an under-investigated research field and aims to foster a reflection on the opportunity to integrate Internet crime research, and even more Internet crime investigations, into the everyday routines of criminologists, analysts and law enforcement officers.

In recent years an emerging global trend of introducing legislation to use civil procedures against criminal assets can be detected. However, these civil forfeiture models, which exist vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This paper seeks to identify issues which need to be considered when such a scheme is being designed and examines the options which have been adopted.

The paper examines the legislative provisions in a number of jurisdictions setting out the common issues which have arisen and the range of options which have attempted as potential solutions.

The paper concludes that jurisdictions which seek to introduce civil forfeiture legislations now have various examples from which to learn but that these models will likely evolve in the face of litigation and experience as legislatures and policymakers attempt to produce fair but effective procedures for the civil recovery of criminal proceeds.

As further jurisdictions respond to this emerging trend and draft their own legislation, there is much to be leant from the issues which others have considered necessary to address and the way in which these issues have been dealt with.

This paper seeks to explore the applicability of the eclectic framework of international production in explaining the growth of transnational crime groups.

The paper adopts a comparative discussion perspective. It examines a number of both similarities and differences between legitimate and illegal international business organizations suggesting that similarities between the two are sufficient to ensure the usefulness of existing explanatory frameworks which focus on ownership, location and internalization (OLI) advantages.

Similarities are apparent in the growing internationalization of criminal activities and the emergence of network structures. Key changes in the business environment, particularly globalization and technological change, are affecting both legitimate and illegal business. Like legitimate business, international crime is undergoing significant change. Increased diversification is apparent as traditional criminal activities – gambling, loan sharking and prostitution – are combined with cross‐border automobile smuggling, art and archaeological theft, arms trafficking, trade in illegal wildlife products and credit‐card fraud.

The discussion suggests a “mirroring” of legitimate international business strategies and structures by transnational criminal organizations. This raises interesting policy implications as to how such organisations might develop over time and how policy could be used to contain such activities.