By Don Weatherburn, Jessie Holmes

This paper finds that the national decline in robbery and theft offences is partly due to a reduction in heroin use and partly due to improvements in the economy, but that other factors are likely to have also played a role.

This report aims to describe and discuss inter-jurisdictional trends in police-recorded robbery and theft offences. Rates of recorded robbery and theft per head of population are calculated for each Australian jurisdiction from 1994/1995 to 2012. Rates of recorded robbery are disaggregated into armed and unarmed robbery. Rates of recorded theft are disaggregated into burglary, motor vehicle theft and other theft.

Sydney: New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2013. 7p,

By Lance Smith, Erin Louis, Letitia Preston

The incidence of service station armed robbery has steadily increased over the past decade. This paper examines the incidence of armed robbery at service stations and profiles the offenders involved.

The incidence of service station armed robbery has steadily increased over the past decade. Using the Australian Institute of Criminology's National Armed Robbery Monitoring Program (NARMP) data, this paper examines the incidence of armed robbery at service stations and profiles the offenders involved. The NARMP data shows that about one in ten armed robberies in Australia were of service stations, and that these were more likely to be targeted at night by lone offenders using knives. The most common item stolen was cash, with an average value of $643. The relative youth of the offenders — on average 23 years old — and infrequent use of firearms suggests the armed robberies involved little if any planning. This opportunistic targeting of service stations has been attributed to their extended opening hours, their sale of cigarettes and other exchangeable goods, their high volume of cash transactions and their isolation from other businesses. Widespread adoption of crime prevention measures by service stations, such as transfer trays, could help reduce their risk of being robbed, but the paper cautions that displacement effects should be considered prior to the implementation of new countermeasures.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009. 6p.

By Georgina Fuller

In this paper, four armed robbery profiles have been constructed, based on information contained in qualitative police narratives supplied as part of the AIC’s National Armed Robbery Monitoring Program.

In 2010, approximately 5,000 individuals and organisations reported being the victim of armed robbery. After assault and sexual assault, armed robbery is the third most common violent crime reported; a trend that has remained consistent over the last 10 years (AIC 2013). However, armed robbery is unique when compared with other types of violence due to its overlap with property crime. Specifically, while armed robbery involves the use or threat of force or violence, the primary purpose is to deprive the individual or organisation of their property (Pink 2011). A such, an incident of armed robbery can have both immediate and long-term psychological and economic ramifications for the victim. Therefore, the prevention of armed robbery remains a key focus of business groups,as well as law enforcement agencies.

Previous profiles of armed robbery have almost exclusively focused on the offender. Research conducted in Australia and overseas has examined the characteristics and motivations of offenders in order to explain the variations in robbery (see Gabor et al. 1987; Matthews 2002; Mouzos & Borzycki 2003; Nugent et al. 1989; Walsh 1986). However, while such an approach has merits as an investigative tool, it is limited in its presentation of armed robbery more generally. Specifically, these profiles fail to appropriately capture the influence of the environment and the victim on the offender. It would therefore be useful, when looking to prospectively prevent crime, to broaden this focus and incorporate not just the offender but also vulnerabilities associated with particular victims and/or locations.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2014. 8p.

By Simon Hallsworth

Street crime remains high on the public and political agenda, and is frequently the subject of media attention and concern. This book aims to provide a detailed and accessible account of the phenomenon, placing the subject in its theoretical, historical and political context. It addresses the question of how serious a problem street crime really is, and why it has become such a hot political issue. The book draws upon contemporary debates about the supposed presence of an emerging underclass, and in particular the 'criminalisation' and 'racialisation' of black communities with whom it has come to be particular associated in the public mind. The author then develops a framework of analysis which focuses upon the relationship of three key variables: the production of motivated offenders, the availability and suitability of victims, and a study of the limits inherent in current control strategies. Finally, the book concludes that a successful prevention strategy requires an agenda for revitalising the public sphere in inner city areas --rather than reliance policies of situational crime prevention, zero tolerance policing and increased punishment

Cullompton, UK: Willan, 2005. 202p.

By David W.M. Sorensen

During the 18-year period 1990 to 2007, the number of reported residential burglaries (indbrud i beboelse) was very stable. This changed in 2008 to 2010, when burglary increased by 30% (averaged over these three years) as compared to the previous 18-year average. Seen in its most extreme light, the number of reported burglaries in 2009 was 65.3% higher than in 2005. Little solid evidence exists as to why residential burglary increased so dramatically in 2008 and 2009. The current report examines this question using POLSAS data on 234,745 residential burglaries reported in Denmark during the six-year period 2005-2010, plus data on long term crime trends (1990-2010) and other social indicators. The report begins with a comparison of the rise in burglary to trends in overall Danish property crime. This reveals that the increase in burglary is far greater than that for any other major crime category. Burglary is therefore unique in this regard. Trends in Danish burglary are then compared to burglary trends in the EU and other Nordic countries to see if Denmark’s increase is part of a wider EU/Nordic phenomenon. The EU countries worst hit by the economic recession of 2008 experienced the sharpest increases in burglary. Denmark shares little in common with these countries, but shares much in common with Sweden, which also experienced a (far more modest) rise in burglary. In sum, domestic and international trend analyses reveal that the increase in Danish burglary probably has multiple causes emanating from both within and outside Denmark.

Copenhagen: Danish Crime Prevention Council, 2011. 64p.

By Amy Randall and Martin Gill

In a study commissioned by Churchill Home Insurance, Perpetuity Research interviewed 15 convicted burglars to help understand what factors motivate burglary. The report considers various aspects such as how targets are selected, the level of planning and the equipment used, the significance of security measures, and how stolen goods are sold on. It also covers how the interviewees perceived the legal change made in 2013 that clarified the rights of householders to use force to protect themselves or others in their homes. The report provides a fascinating insight in to the thought process of a small sample of those who have committed burglary

Tunbridge Wells, UK: Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International, 2014. 48p.

By Trevor Bennett and Linda Durie

The report describes the work of the Domestic Burglary Task Force (DBTF) in Cambridge, which was established in July 1994 to examine the nature of residential burglary in Cambridge and to design and implement initiatives to prevent it. The group devised an overall strategy which was to divide the work into two stages: (1) a data-gathering stage, during which information about burglary in Cambridge was collected, and (2) a programme implementation stage, during which various projects were designed and implemented. The main findings of the data-gathering stage were that residential burglary in Cambridge was concentrated within specific wards to the north of the city and within specific ‘hot spots’ within these wards. The ‘hot spots’ and the ‘hot wards’ were characterised by high levels of repeat victimisation. There was some evidence that residential burglaries in the area were committed by local youths who lived in the same or adjacent wards and who selected the target areas as a result of convenience, easy access through footpaths and alleyways, and the perceived abundance of suitable targets. As a result of these findings, the DBTF identified the largest ‘hot spot’ in the north of the City, and the two wards which contained the ‘hot spot’, as the targeted area. One of the key principles of the overall programme strategy was that the nature of the solution to burglary in Cambridge should be based on sound knowledge of the nature of the problem. A number of seminars were organised for representatives of local agencies in order to identify burglary prevention strategies which would best match the nature of the problems identified. As a result of these seminars, a number of burglary prevention strategies were identified and implemented.

London: Policing and Reducing Crime Unit Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, 1999. 61p.

By Jerry H. Ratcliffe

In examining home addresses of burglars and the addresses of their targets, this study found that burglars did not, as expected, work in their own neighbourhood. Most burglars (77%) travelled away from their home suburb to do their work, travelling an average of five kilometres to their target. There was no evidence that physical boundaries separating suburbs, such as carriageways and parkland, acted as barriers inhibiting burglars’ movement. This has important implications for both urban design and crime prevention.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2003. 6p.

By George Rengert and John Wasilchick

Residential burglar perceptions were classified into spatial and temporal components that form their routine activities in order to understand criminal activities from the criminal's point of view.

Burglar informants were selected from a large inner city (Philadelphia), a mid-sized city (Wilmington, Delaware), and suburban areas between these two cities. Each informant was asked to construct time diaries noting the time they awoke and what time they performed different activities for the following day. After the "next day" diary was kept, informants were asked to keep a similar diary for a future time that included a burglary. The process of searching for a burglary site has properties in common with the spatial search process involved in the real estate market. The objective of burglars' spatial search was to locate the best possible burglary site. Information sources used in burglaries included newspapers, friends and other contacts, jobs, and spatial research. Different burglars used different search strategies, and no urgency was involved in locating a crime site. As burglars searched for homes to burglarize, a sequence of homes was viewed, each with a set of attributes and locational factors. Once a successful burglary was committed, the information gained from the experience reinforced positive images the burglar had about a specific community. This made the same community more likely to be chosen for subsequent burglaries. The impact of residential burglary on the urban infrastructure is discussed, and time is viewed as an important concept in defining opportunities for crime in terms of spatial accessibility.

Philadelphia: Temple University, Department of Criminal Justice, 1988. 187p.

By Richard T. Wright, Scott H. Decker and Gilbert Geis

Through extensive and candid interviews, the authors of this ground-breaking work have studied burglars' decision-making processes within the context of their streetlife culture. In this volume they present their findings in the areas of motivation, target selection, methods of entering and searching a residence, and methods of selling stolen goods, concluding with a discussion of the theoretical implications of their research.

Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996. 248p.

By J. E. Logan, Tadesse Haileyesus, Allison Ertl, Whitney L Rostad, andJeffrey H Herbst

Since interpersonal violence was recognized as a public health problem in the 1970s, much attention has focused on preventing violence among young persons and intimate partners (1). Violence directed against older adults (≥60 years) has received less attention, despite the faster growth of this population than that of younger groups (2). Using data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) and the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), CDC analyzed rates of nonfatal assaults and homicides against older adults during 2002-2016. Across the 15-year period, the nonfatal assault rate increased 75.4% (from 77.7 to 136.3 per 100,000) among men, and from 2007 to 2016, increased 35.4% (from 43.8 to 59.3) among women. From 2010 to 2016, the homicide rate increased among men by 7.1%, and a 19.3% increase was observed from 2013 to 2016 among men aged 60-69 years. Growth in both the older adult population and the rates of violence against this group, especially among men, suggests an important need for violence prevention strategies (3). Focusing prevention efforts for this population will require improved understanding of magnitude and trends in violence against older adults.

MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019 Apr 5;68(13):297-302.

Edited by Philip C. Parnell and Stephanie C. Kane

The changes that are engulfing the world today - the fall of nation-states and dictatorships, migrations and border crossings, revolution, democratization, and the international spread of capital - call for new approaches to the subject of crime. Anthropologists engage a variety of methods to answer that call in Crime's Power . Their view of crime extends into the intimacies of everyday life as war transforms personal identities, the violence of a serial killer inhabits paintings, and as the feel of imprisonment reveals society's potentials. Moving beyond the fixities of law, this book explores the nature of crime as an expression of power across the spectrum of human differences.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 310p.

By James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter

In the early 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to concerted advocacy-group lobbying, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of "hate crime" laws requiring the collection of statistics on, and enhancing the punishment for, crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places the evolution of the hate crime concept in socio-legal perspective. James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter adopt a skeptical if not critical stance, maintaining that legal definitions of hate crime are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. The book contends that hate crime as a socio-legal category represents the elaboration of an identity politics now manifesting itself in many areas of the law. But the attempt to apply the anti-discrimination paradigm to criminal law generates problems and anomalies. For one thing, members of minority groups are frequently hate crime perpetrators. Moreover, the underlying conduct prohibited by hate crime law is already subject to criminal punishment. Jacobs and Potter question whether hate crimes are worse or more serious than similar crimes attributable to other anti-social motivations. Advancing a provocative argument in clear and persuasive terms, Jacobs and Potter show how the recriminalization of hate crime has little (if any) value with respect to law enforcement or criminal justice. Indeed, enforcement of such laws may exacerbate intergroup tensions rather than eradicate prejudice.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. 224p.

By Jennifer Turner

In the first-ever report on the extent and impact of cooperation between courts and the private debt collection industry nationwide, the American Civil Liberties Union found courts in 26 states and Puerto Rico in which judges issued arrest warrants for alleged debtors at the request of private debt collectors.

This practice violates the many state and federal laws as well as international human rights standards that prohibit the jailing of debtors. It worsens their financial struggles by subjecting them to court appearances, arrest warrants that appear on background checks, and jail time that interfere with their wages, their jobs, their ability to find housing, and more.

An estimated one in three adults in the United States has a debt that has been turned over to a private collection company, according to the Urban Institute. More than 6,000 of these companies operate in the U.S. At the bidding of the private debt collection industry, courts issue tens of thousands of arrest warrants every year when people don’t appear in court to deal with unpaid civil debt judgments.

New York: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 2018. 97p.

By Anu Koskivirta

"This work explores the quantitative and qualitative development of homicide in eastern Finland in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. The area studied comprised northern Savo and northern Karelia in eastern Finland. At that time, these were completely agricultural regions on the periphery of the kingdom of Sweden. Indeed the majority of the population still got their living from burn-beating agriculture. The analysis of homicide there reveals characteristics that were exceptional by Western European standards: the large proportion of premeditated homicides (murders) and those within the family is more reminiscent of modern cities in the West than of a pre-modern rural society. However, there also existed some archaic forms of Western crime there. Most of the homicides within the family were killings of brothers or brothers-in law, connected with the family structure (the extended family) that prevailed in the region. This study uses case analysis to explore the causes for the increase in both familial homicide and murder in the area. One of the explanatory factors that is dealt with is the interaction between the faltering penal practice that then existed and the increase in certain types of homicide.

Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society / SKS, 2003. 217p.

By Christopher E. Ferrell, Shishir Mathur, Justin Meek and Matthew Piven

There are considerable environmental and public health benefits if people choose to walk, bicycle, or ride transit, instead of drive. However, little work has been done on the effects of neighborhood crimes on mode choice. Instinctively, we understand that the threats posed by possible criminal activity in one’s neighborhood can play a major role in the decision to drive, take transit, walk or ride a bicycle, but so far little empirical evidence supports this notion, let alone guides public infrastructure investments, land use planning, or the allocation of police services. This report--describing Phase 2 of a research study conducted for the Mineta Transportation Institute on crime and travel behavior--finds that high crime neighborhoods tend to discourage residents from walking or riding a bicycle. When comparing a high crime to a lower crime neighborhood the odds of walking over choosing auto decrease by 17.25 percent for work trips and 61 percent for non-work trips. For transit access to work trips, the odds of choosing walk/bike to a transit station over auto decrease by 48.1 percent. Transit trips, on the other hand, are affected by neighborhood crime levels in a similar way to auto trips, wherein high crime neighborhoods appear to encourage transit mode choice.

San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute, 2012. 104p.

By Grahame Allen and Megan Harding

“Knife” crime, a crime involving an object with a blade or sharp instrument, is a persistent concern and disproportionately impacts the young and disadvantaged. Various remedies have been tried over the years. The Library Briefing Paper Knives and Offensive Weapons (SN00330) discusses the legislation which governs the carrying (possession) and sale of knives and other offensive weapons.

London: House of Commons Library, 2021. 37p.

By Brian Loughman and Richard Sibery

As businesses continue to expand globally into new and emerging markets, bribery and corruption risks have increased exponentially. Bribery and Corruption offers a comprehensive look at this growing problem, and at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other international anti-bribery and corruption conventions. Presenting hypothetical examples of situations companies will face, along with practical solutions, the book offers detailed global guidance on a region and country-specific basis.

The FCPA prohibits US companies and their subsidiaries from bribing foreign officials, either directly or indirectly through intermediaries, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. It also requires companies to keep accurate records of all business transactions and maintain an effective system of internal accounting controls. Internationally, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) anti-bribery convention has been adopted by 38 countries and creates legally binding standards related to bribery of foreign public officials.

Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. 417p.

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By Allan Liska and Timothy Gallo

The biggest online threat to businesses and consumers today is ransomware, a category of malware that can encrypt your computer files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. With this practical book, you'll learn how easily ransomware can infect your system and what steps you can take to stop the attack before it sets foot in your network. Security experts Allan Liska and Timothy Gallo explain how the success of these attacks has spawned not only several variants of ransomware, but also a litany of ever-changing ways they're delivered to targets. You'll learn pragmatic methods for responding quickly to a ransomware attack, as well as how to protect yourself from becoming infected in the first place"

Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2017. 174p.

By James Banks

This book explores the manifold actual, possible and probable interconnections between gambling and crime in the context of the increased availability of wagering activities across many regions of the world. It examines the impact of the proliferation and propinquity of land-based betting establishments on crime, the role of organised crime in the provision of both licit and illicit forms of gambling, as well as problem gambling, crime and the administration of criminal justice. It also assesses the links between gambling, sport and corruption and the dimensions of crime that takes place in and around internet gambling sites. A thought-provoking study, this will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of sociology, criminology and social policy.

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 247p.