By Jo Woodiwiss

Set against the background of the recovered memory wars, this book explores women’s engagement with narratives of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), recovery and therapeutic discourses and the role they themselves play in the construction and use of abuse narratives whether they have, by their own definition, continuous, recovered or false memories. These are the women whose voices have been largely absent from the debates around recovery and the recovered memory wars and who are mostly constructed as weak, vulnerable and at the mercy of misguided therapists or the ongoing effects of abuse. This is not a book about childhood sexual abuse. Nor is it a book on the recovered memory wars, or on memory. It is also not a general book about therapeutic or self-help culture. Yet these themes do form part of the background against which the research for this book was carried out. They also form part of the background against which women engage in the ongoing process of (re)constructing their own narratives of childhood sexual abuse.

Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 252p.

By Rebecca M. Bowen

This book has three important sections. The first section sets the stage for this book by reviewing the historical context within which early theories of child sexual abuse were developed. The second section of the book then turns to the task of reviewing the empirical knowledge base that defines the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse. This section considers the prevalence and incidence of child sexual abuse, extrafamilial and intrafamilial abuse, factors associated with risk of abuse and of offending, and nonoffending guardians. It is argued throughout this section that child sexual abuse is an epidemic fueled by sociocultural structures and values. The final section considers the aftermath of child sexual abuse—the professional response to child sexual abuse. In the important final chapter of this book, the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse—as illustrated in the empirical knowledge base—is compared to that of the professional response to child sexual abuse. This comparison provides striking evidence that society’s response to child sexual abuse is failing profoundly. By reviewing the assumptions underlying society’s response to child sexual abuse, I argue that the reason for such a complete system failure is that the systemic response is grounded in the historical and often myth-bound conceptualization of child sexual abuse rather than in the empirical literature.

New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic, 2002. 321p.

Edited by Adele D. Jones

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is one of the most under-reported criminal acts against children. Children are often too young to know exactly what is happening to them, but instinctively feel that something is wrong and are often left with an awareness that life will never be the same. CSA violates children’s rights and perforates their sense of security and normalcy; a perforation that is further enlarged by the colluded silence of those who have the responsibility to protect them. Incidents of CSA seem to be escalating worldwide and the Caribbean is not exempt. Increasing numbers of reports of CSA in the media suggest that either a higher proportion of the cases are being reported or that there are increasing instances of such abuse. However, although this problem seems to affect the region, the topic still remains taboo and generally not spoken about and often it seems that family reputation and honour are considered more important and placed ahead of the safety and well-being of the child. Further, it seems to be perpetuated through a culture of gender inequalities, social and culturally held perceptions about family interactions and asking for help as well as patriarchal and outdated legislation.

Basingstoke, Hampshire. UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 290p.

Edited by Paris Goodyear-Brown

This handbook is the most comprehensive volume on child sexual abuse to date and offers a snapshot of the state of the field as it stands today. As such, it is intended to aid the refinement of our thoughts, to help increase our mutual understanding as we approach this critically important issue together, and to help shape society’s approach to child sexual abuse.

Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. 642p.

By Edward L. Rowan

The number of confirmed cases of child sexual abuse in the United States rose from 6,000 in 1976 to 113,000 in 1985, and rose again to 300,000 in 2000. Understanding Child Sexual Abuse explores the dynamics, effects, treatment options, and preventive measures available to both the children and the adults involved in child sexual abuse. Intended for survivors and for all those wishing to help victims, Understanding Child Sexual Abuse is a useful, sensitive guide to the treatment of such behavior and its aftermath.

Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. 113p.

By Marcus Ward and Holly Rodger

The purpose of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA or ‘the Inquiry’) is to investigate whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their responsibility to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales, and to make meaningful recommendations for change, to help ensure that children now, and in the future, are better protected from sexual abuse. The Inquiry has launched 13 investigations into a broad range of institutions. The Residential Schools Investigation will investigate the nature and extent of, and institutional responses to, child sexual abuse in residential schools, including schools in the state and independent sectors and schools for children with disabilities and/or special educational needs. This literature review summarises the research literature on child sexual abuse (including child sexual exploitation) in residential schools. The aim is to provide an overview of what is already known, specifically in relation to child sexual abuse that occurs within residential schools, their role in safeguarding children from sexual abuse and the role they play in protecting children from sexual abuse in general. The review also draws on literature relating to non-residential schools from all sectors (see the methodology section for an overview of the types of schools this covers).

London: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, 2018. 54p.

By Sue Jago, with Lorena Arocha, Isabelle Brodie, Margaret Melrose, Jenny Pearce and Camille Warrington

This research project has explored the extent and nature of the response of LSCBs to the 2009 government guidance on safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation. Where the guidance is followed, there are examples of developing and innovative practice to protect and support young people and their families and to investigate and prosecute their abusers. However, the research has found that the delivery of that dual approach to child sexual exploitation is far from the norm. There are three areas that cause particular concern: • only a quarter of LSCBs in England are implementing the guidance • young people, their families and carers receive awareness raising in less than half of the country • the prosecution of abusers is rare and, where criminal proceedings take place, young people’s experience of court is intolerable These and related findings are set out below together with recommendations on how to ensure that action is taken, locally and nationally, to address this form of child abuse.

Bedfordshire, UK: University of Bedfordshire, 2011.140p.

By Office of the Children’s Commissioner

This report, coming at the end of the first year of this Inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups, has uncovered for the first time the extent to which children in England are being sexually exploited. We publish the number of known victims over a set period of time but can say with certainty that our figures are an undercounting of the true scale of this form of abuse. We know that because, although many agencies and organisations responded to our request for information and data, there were some notable gaps, with a few local authorities failing to do so. Furthermore, we know that children are sexually exploited in contexts other than in gangs and groups, including by lone perpetrators. Evidence about those children is not included in this report. During the course of this Inquiry we have heard from young people who have been raped in the most unbearable ways. These have included children who have been abducted, trafficked, beaten and threatened after being drawn into a web of sexual violence by promises of love and others who have suffered in silence for years as they are casually and routinely raped by the boys in their neighbourhoods – as they come out of school, as they walk to the shops, as they play in their local park. The vast majority of the perpetrators of this terrible crime are male. They range in age from as young as fourteen to old men. They come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe. The failure of agencies to recognise this means that too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they so desperately need.

London: The Office, 2012. 138p.

By Maximo Q. Mejia Jr., Pierre Cariou, François-Charles Wolff

Piracy in its various forms has posed a threat to trade and shipping for millennia. In the 1970s, a steady rise in the number of attacks ushered in the present phenomenon of modern piracy and not many parts of the world's seas are free from piracy in one form or another today. This paper reviews the historical and geographical developments of piracy in shipping, with a discussion on contentious issues involved in defining piracy. Using data available on piracy acts collected from the IMB related to 3,957 attacks that took place between 1996 and 2008, we shed light on recent changes in geography and modi operandi of acts of piracy and investigate how poverty and political instability may be seen as the root causes of piracy.

Malmo, Sweden: World Maritime University, 2010. 35p.

By Aurélien Dasre , Angela Greulich, Inan Ceren

This paper identifies motors and barriers for combatting domestic violence against women in Turkey – a country where modernism and conservatism are in constant interplay. We combine information from the Demographic Health Surveys and the Turkish Domestic Violence Survey and distinguish between controlling behavior, physical and sexual violence. Our empirical analysis tests how far a woman's intra-household decision making power (as measured by her education, her activity status, her income etc.) bears the potential to reduce her risk of experiencing domestic violence in Turkey. The analysis takes into account contextual factors as well as partner and household characteristics. We find that women's participation in the labor market does not, on its' own, reduce women's risk of experiencing intimate partner violence, but an egalitarian share of economic resources between spouses in likely to protect women against domestic violence. This finding has two important implications: First, higher education enabling women to access formal wage employment allows women not only to gain economic independence, but also to freely choose their partner. Second, unstable economic conditions that harm earning opportunities for men are an important risk factor for couples to experience conflits that can result in domestic violence against women. Against the background of the recent economic crisis that comes hand in hand with a backlash of gender and family norms in Turkey, our results highlight the need of policy action in this field.

Paris: University of Paris, Maison des Sciences Économiques, 2017. 37p.

By Lavinia Piemontese

This paper proposes a new approach for quantifying the economic cost of hidden economies. I specifically apply the method to the case of mafia racketeering in Northern Italy, and in so doing, provide the first explicit estimate of the economic cost of mafia spread in this area. I show both theoretically and empirically that acts of extortion imposed on certain firms are linked to resource misallocation. I quantify the share of output that the mafia extorts from firms, which ranges between 0.5 and 5 percent of firm-level output for the taxed firms. I then consider what these estimates imply and find that between 2000 and 2012, the Northern Italian economy suffered an aggregate loss of approximately 2.5 billion Euros. Quite remarkably, only one-fourth of this cost consists of the aggregate transfer to the mafia. The remaining three-fourths corresponds to the contraction of production due to misallocation.

Lyon, France: University of Lyon, 2021. 56p.

By Environmental Investigation Agency, UK

This is a tragic true story of high culture, peerless art forms, and a rich historical identity being warped by greed and obsession, which consumes its very foundations to extinction and sparks a violent crime wave across Asian forests. This report details the findings of EIA’s investigations into the Siamese rosewood trade in recent years, including in the year since the CITES listing. It reveals how crime, corruption, and ill-conceived government policies from Thailand to China, via Laos and Vietnam, are likely to result in the demise of Siamese rosewood in the coming years, unless significant and rapid reforms are made.

London: Environmental Investigation Agency, 2014. 28p.

By Alexander Fedorov, Alexei Babko, Alexander Sukharenko, Valentin Emelin

Transnational organized environmental crime is a rapidly growing threat to the environment, to revenues from natural resources, to state security and to sustainable development. It robs developing countries of an estimated US$ 70 billion to US$ 213 billion annually or the equivalent of 1 to 2 times global Official Development Assistance. It also threatens state security by increasing corruption and extending into other areas of crime, such as arms and drug smuggling, and human trafficking. Russia possesses enormous forest resources (over 83 billion m³), representing a quarter of the world’s timber reserves. However, illegal logging and forest crime result in enormous monetary losses from the state budget According to data from the Russian Federal Forestry Agency (Rosleshoz), in 2014 alone there were 18,400 cases of the illegal logging of forest plantations—a total volume of 1,308,400 m³—with an estimated value of 10.8 billion rubles. However other estimates vary from 10-20% (Prime Minister’s office) to 50% (Prosecutor General’s office) of total timber harvest. While there has been a reduction in the amount of illegal logging in some regions of the Russian Federation, illegal logging has increased in other regions. Presently, no effective methods have been adopted for assessing the amount of illegal logging in the Russian Federation. The damage caused to forests is not only economic, but also ecological. The report reveals the scale of illegal logging in Russia based on the best available, most up-to-date, expert data. It is hoped that governments will take note and take action.

Arendal, Norway: GRID-Arendal, 2017, 38p.

By Teagan McGinnis, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira and David Shirk

Justice in Mexico has released its latest working paper titled Analyzing the Problem of Femicide in Mexico by Teagan McGinnis, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David Shirk. This study examines the patterns of violence against women in Mexico, with special attention to the problem of femicide. While national homicide data show that the proportion of female homicide victims in Mexico has stayed largely the same for decades, the authors demonstrate that the elevated rate of homicides throughout the country has contributed to a large increase in the total number of female homicide victims. Because many homicides targeting women have distinctive characteristics—such as sexual violence, intimate partners, or other factors attributable to the woman’s gender—they have been legally codified as “femicides,” murders targeting women due to their gender.

The authors explore the question of why both the number and proportion of femicides has increased dramatically since national level data became available in 2015. Since prosecutors play a key role in determining whether a crime will be classified as either a homicide or femicide, the authors specifically evaluate the effects of state level prosecutorial capacity on the reporting of such crimes. The authors compiled an original dataset of state prosecutorial budgets and levels of homicidal violence (by gender and by state) and used both means testing and linear regression models to assess differences between states with special prosecutors and those without, while controlling for the level of homicidal violence across states. In terms of qualitative methods, the authors also compiled federal and state laws to examine differences in criminal and administrative laws and conducted interviews with state prosecutors and security experts.

The authors find statistically significant evidence that states that have special prosecutors for the investigation of femicides are substantially more likely to classify female homicides as femicides. Indeed, appointing a special prosecutor for gender-related crimes increases the investigation of femicide cases by 50% on average, even controlling for levels of homicidal violence in those states. These findings illustrate the impact of recent prosecutorial reforms in Mexico and offer useful insights for policy makers and activists working to combat violence against women in Mexico. Informed by the novel findings in this study, the authors recommend that Mexican states lacking special prosecutorial offices for the investigation and prosecution of femicides should create such units, and that all states should provide more resources and prosecutorial tools for the investigation and prosecution of gender-motivated crimes.

Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2022. 33p.

By Allepandro Bernales, Diether Beuermann, Douglas Cumming. and Christiaan Olid

Relatively little is known about the effects of blue-collar crime (theft, robbery, vandalism or arson) on financial decisions. Previous literature has focused its attention either on 'regional' crime rates or the 'perception' of crime as business obstacles. Instead, we examine financing terms of 'individual' firms that 'effectively' experimented blue-collar crime events. We show that blue-collar crime worsens the access and conditions to external financing, which is unexpected since firms do not have to reveal to lenders that they suffered such crime incidents. We also find evidence that firm-information leakages may explain the negative effects of blue-collar crime on financing terms.

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2022. 785p.

By Jorge M. Agüero

About half of Peruvian women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced some form of violence from their partners. Through a quantitative analysis, this report explores how violence rates against women vary by ethnic group and over time. Based on a nationally representative sample of more than 75,000 women surveyed between 2003 and 2012 and a review of the literature on ethnic classification in Peru, a typology is applied to measure ethnicity, based on women’s linguistic backgrounds, allowing for a consistent ethnic characterization throughout the period of analysis. In this typology, the first group is made up of women who speak an indigenous language at home and do not speak Spanish. A second group, called “historic” Spanish speakers, is composed of women who learned Spanish during childhood and still use it today, while the third group, called “recent” Spanish speakers, includes women who grew up speaking an indigenous language but now speak Spanish. The highest rate of all types of violence is found in this last group, with a much greater difference in sexual and severe physical violence. This is consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model developed in this study in which violence depends on the type of couple. The model finds that women who speak “recent” Spanish—and who have what is termed a lower “outside option” than their “historic” Spanish-speaking male partners—experience greater violence. The study found that the gap in rates of violence against women among these three language groupings has remained constant over time despite an overall reduction in violence. This shows that current policies to provide care for victims and prevent violence against women are insufficient because the policies do not necessarily target groups with a greater risk of violence. This is unlike other areas of public health, where interventions are directly targeted at the most vulnerable populations

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2018. 43p.

By Ben Coetzee and Riana Horn

Due to the importance of the precious metals mining industry and the continuous criminal threat to the industry, the Chamber of Mines of South Africa approached the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) to investigate the occurrence of theft and various related issues. The statistical information this project is based on was provided by the mining sector and is for the period January 2000-December 2004. Some of the mining houses have implemented orientation workshops to explain what type of employee conduct constitutes a crime and the importance of reporting crime. It was therefore important to test the perceptions of employees in the industry to ensure that these workshops are effective. Despite advancements in crime detection and prevention technology, transgressions are nonetheless common at most mines and processing plants. The precious metals mining industry is still not capable of determining exactly how much product is lost during processing phases, leaving a window of opportunity for theft and corruption. Reliable crime reporting is critical to determining the extent of the criminal threat facing the precious metals mining industry. Although most mines have developed processes to record and manage crime-related information, the methods used by the police and the mining industry are not standardised for efficient analysis purposes. It became evident during interviews conducted for the study that there is a general perception in the mining industry that most stolen product sold on the black market ends up in some organised illegal business or syndicate. It is presumed top-level syndicate members, who supply organised criminal dealers, dispose of the largest volume of stolen product. Statistics recorded on identified syndicates may therefore reflect the most reliable magnitude of losses suffered when it comes to approximating the extent of precious metals theft in South Africa.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2007. 140p.

By Chandre Gould

In this monograph, readers will meet some of the men who are responsible for violent crime in South Africa. The narratives presented here are based on interviews with men who have been incarcerated for murder, robbery and rape. These accounts show that the foundation for their criminal careers was laid early in their lives and compounded by their experiences of loss, abuse and alienation. Readers are taken on a journey through their lives to understand why crime in South Africa is so violent, and what needs to be done to prevent it.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2017. 144p.

By Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

The aim of this project is to study one specific sport which could reveal money laundering schemes that may also be occurring in other sports. As one of the largest sports in the world, football1 was chosen. Both professional and amateur football were to be examined. Although the scale of vulnerabilities to money laundering is potentially different, risks in both areas were considered likely to be similar.

Paria: FATF, 2009. 42p.

By Marc Fabel and Helmut Rainer

This paper quantifies how much of violent crime in society can be attributed to football-related violence. We study the universe of professional football matches played out in Germany’s top three football leagues over the period 2011-2015. To identify causal effects, we leverage time-series and cross-sectional variation in crime register data, comparing the number of violent crimes on days with and without professional football matches while controlling for date heterogeneity, weather, and holidays. Our main finding shows that violent crime increases by 21.5 percent on a match day. In the regions and time period under consideration, professional football matches explain 8 percent of all violent assaults, and generate social costs of roughly 194 million euros. Exploring possible mechanisms, we establish that the match day effect cannot be explained by emotional cues stemming from either unsettling events during a match or unexpected game outcomes, nor is it driven by increases in domestic violence. Instead, we find that the match day effect can be attributed to violence among males in the 18-29 age group, rises to almost 70 percent on days with high-rivalry derby matches, and that a non-negligible share of it stems from violent assaults on police officers. These findings are inconsistent with frustration-aggression theories that can explain sports-related violence in the United States, but can be accommodated by social identity explanations of football hooliganism.

Munich: CESifo, 2021. 40p.