By Ireland Bellsmith, Olivia Goertzen, Kia Neilsen and Olivia Stinson

Poverty is both a source and a consequence of injustice. The following is a brief review of some of the many issues at the intersection between poverty and the justice system, and more generally, poverty and access to justice. It is based on a review of the literature as well as some of the prior work by the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, an institute of the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network based in Vancouver, BC. In their first report, the National Advisory Council on Poverty (NACP) defined poverty as the deprivation of resources and the lack of power required to attain basic living standards and to facilitate social integration and inclusion, thus clearly linking poverty to social exclusion or marginalization. Although the Council agreed with that broad definition of poverty, initially used in Opportunity for All – Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy, it also acknowledged that a more comprehensive definition would further emphasize the feelings of social disconnect and disempowerment that commonly characterize poverty. Poverty limits people’s access to justice and their ability to resolve conflicts and deal with everyday legal problems. It is a very disempowering and alienating experience. The resulting inability to successfully resolve legal problems is itself contributing to people’s inability to attain or maintain basic living standards. The justice system instead of empowering poor people and allowing them to fight for their rights is too often a source for them of frustration, disillusionment, and disempowerment, as well as a direct reflection of prevailing social inequality and exclusion. The experience of the justice system for marginalized victims of crime and individuals struggling with poverty is also problematic and is also contributing to and dictated by poverty. Yet, poverty is linked to higher rates of victimization and the consequences of victimization are often direr for people experiencing poverty and marginalization. Finally, the experience of people facing criminal charges or being convicted of a crime is also affected by their social and economic status. The likelihood of a criminal conviction and the consequences of a criminal conviction are directly influenced by the means of the defendants and the means and social capital of those who are convicted. The lack of support for convicted offenders, compounding their ostracization, is a further source of inequality and contributes to further entrenching them and their family in poverty and exclusion. This report presents an overview of recent research and general information gathered from persuasive articles, publications, and research studies on the topic of poverty in Canada and its implications and influence on access to justice. By evaluating different areas of justice and legal proceedings, we seek to identify emerging themes in research and analyze effective practices and those that appear to fall short. Thus far, evident themes between poverty and access to justice include unsatisfactory victim experience, conditions leading to incarceration despite the availability of alternatives, lack of legal awareness within communities, and problematic disempowerment. While current practices and legislation have sought to address these obstacles inherent to the Canadian justice system, we suggest that the circumstances of poverty continue to impede equal access to justice in a number of ways and recommend that further research be conducted to evaluate best practices.

Vancouver, BC: International Centre for Criminal Law Reform , 2022. 38p

By Youngmin Yi

The prevalence, consequences, and unequal distribution of parental and own incarceration in the United States are well documented. However, much of our knowledge of the reach of the carceral state into family life is focused on incarceration of a parent, romantic partner, or child, to the exclusion of other important relationships. Using data from the Family History of Incarceration Study, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N=2,029), this study introduces novel descriptive measures that provide a more comprehensive picture of the demography and racially unequal distribution of family incarceration: degree, generational extension, and permeation. This analysis shows that Black adults in the United States are not only more likely to have experienced family incarceration but are also more likely to have had more family members incarcerated (5.3 members vs. ≤2.8 members for adults of other racial/ethnic groups) and to have had family members from more generations ever incarcerated (1.7 generations vs. ≤1.1 generations for those of other groups). Further, the stability of these estimates across model specifications underscores the importance of interrogating long-standing approaches to the analysis of linkages between race, the criminal legal system, and family life and the investigation of racialized systems and social inequality more broadly

Demography (2023) 60(1):15–40

By R. Nishino and T. Kitade  

 TRAFFIC conducted online surveys to track changes after voluntary ivory bans were introduced from November 2019 on Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Auction, Japan’s largest platforms for online ivory trade, following similar voluntary bans already implemented by Rakuten-Ichiba, Rakuma and Mercari. The trading practices of a major auction house, Mainchi Auction, and trends in illegal ivory exports were also examined to understand better the domestic ivory market in Japan. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult to assess physical markets. RESULTS: Effective measures by companies The number of shops selling ivory on Yahoo Shopping and Rakuten-Ichiba as B2C (business to consumer) trade and the volume of ivory trade on Yahoo Auction, a mixture of B2C and C2C (consumer to consumer) trade, have reduced by almost 100% and more than 99%, respectively as a result of the platform-wide voluntary ivory ban. There was no observable shift in either B2C or C2C trade to other platforms after the introduction of the ivory ban on Yahoo’s platforms. Monitoring of ivory bans by companies such as Mercari and Rakuma was seen to have been effective 

TRAFFIC, Japan Office, Tokyo, Japan., 2020. 30p.

By Amanda J. Aubel, Angela Bruns, Xiaoya Zhang, Shani Buggs & Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz

Living near an incident of firearm violence can negatively impact youth, regardless of whether the violence is experienced firsthand. Inequities in household and neighborhood resources may affect the prevalence and consequences of exposure across racial/ethnic groups. Findings. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study and the Gun Violence Archive, we estimate that approximately 1 in 4 adolescents in large US cities lived within 800 m (0.5 miles) of a past-year firearm homicide during 2014–17. Exposure risk decreased as household income and neighborhood collective efficacy increased, though stark racial/ethnic inequities remained. Across racial/ethnic groups, adolescents in poor households in moderate or high collective efficacy neighborhoods had a similar risk of past-year firearm homicide exposure as middle-to-high income adolescents in low collective efficacy neighborhoods. Conclusions. Empowering communities to build and leverage social ties may be as impactful for reducing firearm violence exposure as income supports. Comprehensive violence prevention efforts should include systems-level strategies that jointly strengthen family and community resources.

Injury Epidemiology volume 10, Article number: 24 (2023)

By John R. Hipp and Seth A. Williams

This review takes stock of recent advances, as well as enduring and emerging challenges, in the area of spatial criminology. Although the notions of place and space are fundamentally intertwined, spatial criminology is distinct in its attempt to measure and theorize explicitly spatial processes and relationships. This review highlights three key themes. First, the use of increasingly smaller geographic units in recent research creates an even greater need to account for spatial behavior of persons when studying the location of crime. Second, although the explosion of spatially precise data in recent years presents exciting possibilities, we argue that theory is falling behind in guiding us in analyzing these new forms of data, and explicitly inductive approaches should be considered to complement existing deductive strategies. Third, an important direction for spatial criminology in the next decade is considering the extent to which micro- and mesolevel processes operate invariantly across different macro contexts.

Annual Review of Criminology, 3(1), 2020.

By Marco De Nadai, Yanyan Xu, Emmanuel Letouzé, Marta C. González & Bruno Lepri

Nowadays, 23% of the world population lives in multi-million cities. In these metropolises, criminal activity is much higher and violent than in either small cities or rural areas. Thus, understanding what factors infuence urban crime in big cities is a pressing need. Seminal studies analyse crime records through historical panel data or analysis of historical patterns combined with ecological factor and exploratory mapping. More recently, machine learning methods have provided informed crime prediction over time. However, previous studies have focused on a single city at a time, considering only a limited number of factors (such as socio-economic characteristics) and often at large in a single city. Hence, our understanding of the factors influencing crime across cultures and cities is very limited. Here we propose a Bayesian model to explore how violent and property crimes are related not only to socio-economic factors but also to the built environment (e.g. land use) and mobility characteristics of neighbourhoods. To that end, we analyse crime at small areas and integrate multiple open data sources with mobile phone traces to compare how the different factors correlate with crime in diverse cities, namely Boston, Bogotá, Los Angeles and Chicago. We fnd that the combined use of socio-economic conditions, mobility information and physical characteristics of the neighbourhood effectively explain the emergence of crime, and improve the performance of the traditional approaches. However, we show that the socio-ecological factors of neighbourhoods relate to crime very differently from one city to another. Thus there is clearly no “one fits all” model.

Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 13871 (2020).

Police-reported crime data (hereafter “crime”) is routinely used as a psychosocial stressor in public health research, yet few studies have jointly examined (a) differences in crime exposure based on participant race and ethnicity, (b) differences in measures of crime exposure, and (c) considerations for how exposure to police is captured in police-recorded crime data. We estimate neighborhood exposure to crime and discuss the implications of structural differences in exposure to crime and police based on race and ethnicity. Methods. Using GPS coordinates from 1188 participants in the Newborn Epigenetics Study, we estimated gestational exposure to crime provided by the Durham, North Carolina, Police Department within (a) 800 m and (b) the Census block group of residence. We controlled for non-overlapping spatial boundaries in crime, Census, residential, and police data to report crime spatial (crime per km2) and population (crime per 1000 people per km2) density. Results. We demonstrate dramatic disparities in exposure to crime based on participant race and ethnicity and highlight variability in these disparities based on the type of crime and crime measurement method chosen. Conclusions Public health researchers should give thoughtful consideration when using police-reported crime data to measure and model exposure to crime in the United States, as police-reported data encompasses joint exposure to police and crime in the neighborhood setting.

BMC Public Health (2021) 21:1078

By Julia Yansura and Lakshmi Kumar

In this report, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) presents an analysis of narcotics-related illicit financial flows between the United States and the major narcotics production and transit countries of Mexico and Colombia. The report was commissioned by the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission as part of its mandate to evaluate US drug policies and programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, assess current efforts to reduce the illicit drug supply and address the harms associated with trafficking and drug abuse. A variety of strategies can and have been used to address drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, from manual and aerial crop eradication, to interdiction, illicit crop substitution and other alternate development approaches. While existing strategies have resulted in temporary disruptions to narcotics cultivation and trafficking, they have not been successful in addressing these issues in a comprehensive, lasting manner. At the same time, history has shown that many of these policies have had unintended consequences and caused harm to people, their communities and the environment in very profound ways. Financial strategies from the anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) toolkit offer a different lens to view and address the problem of drug trafficking. In this report, GFI argues that AML/CFT is underutilized in current US and regional counter-narcotics efforts and needs to be reprioritized. Effectively responding to the challenges of drug trafficking and transnational organized crime will require a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary effort that includes AML/CFT, as well as a more comprehensive approach to drug policies that encompasses human rights, public health and development.

Washington, DC: Global Financial Integrity , 2020. 67p.

By PwC

What are the biggest external frauds on the rise, what should you be aware of and how can you mitigate against them? We are delighted to share the key results of PwC’s Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey 2022. External threats are on the rise. Preventing fraud and other economic crimes is a complex challenge, complicated even further by today’s volatile risk landscape. As organisations act quickly to navigate change, bad actors look to exploit the potentially widening cracks in fraud defenses.

London: PwC, 2022. 15p.

By INTERPOL

The development of mobile money services in Africa offer criminals a substantial opportunity to utilize these services to target victims in a variety of crimes as well as to further enable other forms of criminality. This rapid service development combined with criminal opportunities represents a security issue of interest to all member countries in Africa and poses a significant challenge to law enforcement agencies in member countries. As a result, INTERPOL, under the European Union funded ENACT Project, has assessed this issue in order to help drive a more strategic law enforcement response. Criminals and criminal organizations will most probably continue to utilize mobile money services following the recent increase in their popularity and the prominent role such services now play in society across Africa. This prominent role in society has enabled criminals to exploit weaknesses in regulations and identification systems, further enabled by a lack of experience and resources in law enforcement. Crime types have been identified that exploit mobile money services across Africa. These primarily include various types of fraud that target the distinct stages of deployment for mobile money services. Whilst acquisitive crimes significantly impact the lives of victims, criminals have also identified further opportunities to exploit mobile money services to assist other criminal activities. These ‘mobile money enabled crimes’ include illicit commodities purchases, terrorism financing and firearm enabled crime. Such significant crimes pose a threat to stability and security across Africa if not addressed by member countries. The threat from criminality facilitated by mobile money services in Africa is substantial, yet there is sometimes limited capacity amongst law enforcement to manage this complex issue, especially concerning the technical expertise required to utilise relevant evidence in the criminal justice system. As mobile money services develop interoperability across Africa, stronger partnerships amongst all law enforcement agencies, greater awareness of the overall issue at a regional level and identification of best practice responses from such agencies will be required. INTERPOL is in a position to support member countries through coordinated, intelligence led support to law enforcement using a range of police databases and operational support techniques.

Lyon, France: INTERPOL, 2020. 63p.

By EUROPOL

Cybercrime, in its various forms, represents an increasing threat to the EU. Cyber-attacks, online child sexual exploitation, and online frauds are highly complex crimes and manifest in diverse typologies. Meanwhile the perpetrators behind these crimes are becoming increasingly agile, exploiting new situations created by geopolitical and technological changes. The Internet Organised Crime Assessment (IOCTA) is Europol’s assessment of the cybercrime landscape and how it has changed over the last 24 months. Accompanying this report will be a series of spotlight reports released later this year, each of which examines a specific crime area relating to cybercrime.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2023 14p.

By Juraj Sikra

I have explored how to improve cybercrime reporting in Scotland by conducting a systematic literature review. Due to the lack of data on Scotland, I have frequently extrapolated from both the UK and the West. The research questions were: 1. What is known about cybercrime in the UK to date? 2. What is known about cybercrime victims in the UK to date? 3. What is known about cybercrime reporting to date? The answers were retrieved by combining Boolean variables with keywords into Scopus, Web of Science and ProQuest. This resulted in the analysis of 100 peer-reviewed articles. This analysis revealed a common trend, a novel taxonomy, and an original conclusion. The common trend is that of responsibilisation, which is the shifting of responsibility for policing cybercrime from the government onto the citizens and private sector, which will inevitably responsibilise consumers. The novel taxonomy is for classifying cybercrime reporting systems according to three pillars, which I referred to as Human-ToHuman (H2H), Human-To-Machine (H2M) and Machine-To-Machine (M2M). The original conclusion is that to improve cybercrime reporting in Scotland, the process needs to be treated also as a social one rather than a purely mathematical one.

Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 2022. 60p.

By the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

In 2021, America experienced an unprecedented increase in cyber attacks and malicious cyber activity. These cyber attacks compromised businesses in an extensive array of business sectors as well as the American public. As the cyber threat evolves and becomes increasingly intertwined with traditional foreign intelligence threats and emerging technologies, the FBI continues to leverage our unique authorities and partnerships to impose risks and consequences on our nation’s cyber adversaries. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) provides the American public with a direct outlet to report cyber crimes to the FBI. We analyze and investigate the reporting to track the trends and threats from cyber criminals and then share this data with our intelligence and law enforcement partners. The FBI, alongside our partners, recognizes how crucial information sharing of cyber activities is to prepare our partners to combat the cyber threat, through a whole-of-government approach. Critical to that approach is public reporting to IC3 - enabling us to fill in the missing pieces with this valuable information during the investigatory process. Not only does this reporting help to prevent additional crimes, it allows us to develop key insights on the ever-evolving trends and threats we face from malign cyber actors. In 2021, IC3 continued to receive a record number of complaints from the American public: 847,376 reported complaints, which was a 7% increase from 2020, with potential losses exceeding $6.9 billion. Among the 2021 complaints received, ransomware, business e-mail compromise (BEC) schemes, and the criminal use of cryptocurrency are among the top incidents reported. In 2021, BEC schemes resulted in 19,954 complaints with an adjusted loss of nearly $2.4 billion.

Washington, DC: FBI, 2022. 33p.

Austin F. Cullen, Commissioner, et al.

This Commission was established in the wake of significant public concern about money laundering in British Columbia. The public was rightfully disturbed by the prospect of criminals laundering their cash and parking their illicit proceeds in this province. I was given a broad mandate to inquire into and report on money laundering in British Columbia, including: • the extent, growth, evolution, and methods of money laundering in various sectors of the economy; • the acts or omissions of responsible regulatory agencies and individuals that contributed to money laundering in the province; • the effectiveness of the anti–money laundering efforts by these agencies and individuals; and • barriers to effective law enforcement.

Vancouver: Province of British Columbia 2022. 1831p.

By Zach Y. Brown & Eduardo Montero & Carlos Schmidt-Padilla & Maria Micaela Sviatschi

How does gang competition affect extortion? Using detailed data on individual extortion payments to gangs and sales from a leading wholesale distributor of consumer goods and pharmaceuticals in El Salvador, we document evidence on the determinants of extortion payments and the effects of extortion on firms and consumers. We exploit a 2016 nonaggression pact between gangs to examine how collusion affects extortion in areas where gangs previously competed. While the pact led to a large reduction in competition and violence, we find that it increased the amount paid in extortion by approximately 20%. Much of this increase was passed through to retailers and consumers: retailers experienced an increase in delivery fees, leading to an increase in consumer prices. In particular, we find an increase in prices for pharmaceutical drugs and a corresponding increase in hospital visits for chronic illnesses. The results point to an unintended consequence of policies that reduce competition between criminal organizations.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2023. 67p.

by Richard Chelin

Synthetic drugs have created a public-health crisis and changed drug market dynamics in the country. Synthetic drugs, more specifically, new psychoactive substances (NPSs), were first detected in Mauritius in 2013 and since then have had a significant negative impact, overtaking heroin as the most popular drug among young people. The government has developed various policies to address the issue, the most recent being the National Drug Control Masterplan, which promotes collaboration among law enforcement agencies. However, the success of the strategy will depend on its effective implementation.

ENACT-Africa, 2020. 20p.

by Christopher Hernandez-Roy and Rubi Bledsoe

Drug trafficking, especially cocaine trafficking, from source countries in South America to Europe has produced alarming and lasting effects on both sides of the Atlantic. While various trafficking routes to Europe exist, transshipment through the Caribbean, including through the European territories in the region, is of growing concern. In Europe, the expanding cocaine market has brought a rise in homicides, kidnappings, and intimidation. In the city of Antwerp, for example, there were around 200 drug-related violent incidents in the past five years as competing gangs fought over control of territory. In the Caribbean, drug trafficking by organized crime has been associated with record homicide levels, corruption, democratic backsliding, and money laundering, among other pernicious effects. It has also prompted wars between gangs over the control of criminal economies, expanded illegal firearms trafficking, and exacerbated human trafficking both within the region and beyond. Shedding light on the complexity of the issue—while providing policy recommendations for increased cooperation between the United States, Europe, and Caribbean countries—is necessary as both continents seek regional and extra-regional security.

Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),, 2023. 11p

By Benjamin D. Scher , Scott D. Neufeld , Amanda Butler , Matthew Bonn , Naomi Zakimi , Jack Farrell , and Alissa Greer

In light of North America’s persisting drug toxicity crisis, alternative drug policy approaches such as decriminalization, legalization, regulation, and safer supply have increasingly come to the forefront of drug policy discourse. The views of people who use drugs toward drug policy and drug law reform in the Canadian context are essential, yet largely missing from the conversation. The aim of this study was to capture the opinions, ideas, and attitudes of people who use drugs toward Canadian drug laws and potential future alternatives. Methods: This paper was developed as part of the Canadian Drug Laws Project, a cross-jurisdictional qualitative study conducted in British Columbia, Canada between July and September 2020. The qualitative data are from 24 semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of people who use illegal drugs. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically by the research team. Results: Two main themes and corresponding sub-themes are presented: (1) The experience of stigma as a consequence of criminalization; (2) The perceived benefits of drug law reform. Participants spoke in-depth about their experiences living within a criminalized drug policy context and offered suggestions for new pathways forward. Their perspectives illuminate how Canada’s drug laws may shape public attitudes toward people who use drugs and the consequent manifestations of structural, social, and self-stigma experienced by people who use drugs. Conclusion: Participants openly and profoundly believed that current drug laws produced and propagated the public attitudes and structural inequities experienced by people who use drugs in Canada. This matters, not only because our findings highlight the fact that people who use drugs experience stigma in tangible and clearly impactful ways, but it also suggests that the criminalization of drugs shapes the experience of structural, social, and self stigma. Finally, participants believed that efforts to destigmatize people who use drugs would be ineffectual without the enactment of more robust forms of drug law reform such as the decriminalization of illegal drugs.

Contemporary Drug Problems 1-24 © The Author(s) 2023

By Tibor Kiss & Ákos Szigeti

The process of illicit drug trafficking on darknet markets is highly affected by various trust factors. Although the factors potentially affecting customers’ risk perception can be identified based on previous research, cyber criminology has not produced empirical research ranking the importance of the specific factors. This study was designed to fill this gap by developing a tool that measures the importance of the various trust factors. To test out the measurement tool, a large-scale survey with projective situational questions was conducted among university students in Hungary. The sample (n = 5481) was compiled to include potential darknet market customers, respondents with above-average computer skills needed to access the darknet, and taking into account that university students are a group of society particularly exposed to drug consumption. The end product of this research is a trust matrix ranking the factors affecting illicit drug purchases on darknet markets. Among the factors, the survey’s target group ranked reliable and undamaged delivery of goods and the reliability of vendors as the most important. The measurement tool developed in this research will facilitate further criminological research on vendor reputation. Its findings also point to the need for further research on delivery providers and predict that influencing the delivery-related risk perception of potential customers could effectively reduce demand.

May 2023 European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research

By Emilia Ziosi

Honduras has been Central America’s focal point for drug trafficking towards the United States for years as the region’s main transit country. Recent court cases held in the United States have revealed the symbiotic relationship between state actors, business elites and drug trafficking organisations in contemporary Honduras, uncovering the blurred boundaries between the licit and illicit, the upper and underworld in the country. In this article, a drug-trafficking family – ‘Los Cachiros’ transportista (transport) group – is analysed as a case study with the aim of exploring state actors’ involvement in cocaine trafficking.

Drawing on publicly available official judicial documents, this article explores the interpenetrations between formal and informal institutions in the country, arguing that state actors’ involvement in the drug trade in Honduras goes far beyond protection, and has evolved into a powerful network of public, private and criminal actors that has been able to capture the state’s basic sovereign functions with the aim of protecting and promoting their own private interests. In doing so, this article takes forward the state-crime nexus literature. Building on Hall’s (2018) networked approach in the study of illicit economies, this article proposes a conceptual framework to re-theorise the state-crime nexus as a transnationally networked set of relations, which considers the role of external states as actors of power within a country’s state-crime nexus. Looking at the unique relationship between Honduras and the United States, I argue that the concept is useful to understand the role of the United States as a transnational actor of power within the Honduran state-crime nexus.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 4(2), pp. 144–159.