By D. R. Miller.

“A law demanding only a refrain from violence or abstinence from all that may injure others contains but the negative, while it is lacking in the more important, the positive elements. If men, by closing their eyes to the existence of evil, could thereby banish it, then might it be best for all to close their eyes….it is quite certain that we can never hope to discover, through ignorance, what are the various types of criminal abnormality, nor know the many causes or cures for such estrangements. An intelligent and thorough study of the criminal problem will eliminate from our creed that fatalistic formula which asserts that ‘Evil is good not understood’…”

United Brethren Publishing House (1903) 224 pages.

By Robert J. Ingersoll.

In addition to these, nations have relied on confiscation and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposures to public ridicule and contempt. Connected with the court of justice was the chamber of torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in that would surely the construction the most reach of instruments sensitive nerve. All this was in the interest protection of virtue, and done of civilization — for the states. the well-being of how Curiously enough, the fact is that, no matter severe the punishments were, the crimes increased.

NY. Farrell (1892) 49 pages.

By Alexander Dumas.

“The Crimes were published in Paris, in 1839-40, in eight volumes, comprising eighteen titles…. The success of the original work was instantaneous. Dumas laughingly said that he thought he had exhausted the subject of famous crimes, until he became deluged with letters from every province in France, supplying him with material upon other deeds of violence! The subjects which he has chosen, however, are of both historic and dramatic importance.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1910) 1,565 pages.

By Jenny Feltham and Hendelene Prinsloo.

Bringing down the Dragon: An analysis of China’s largest ivory smuggling case, provides an in-depth case study of the inner workings of a wildlife crime syndicate and how Chinese authorities took it down by targeting the key facilitators and following the money. It also highlights how complex trafficking is and offers useful insights for law enforcement. The Chen organised crime group was a successful organised crime network, the kingpins, the untouchables. For several years they trafficked huge quantities of ivory by flying under the radar and eluding authorities through their corrupt connections. That all changed in late 2018 when Chen Chenzong, son of the Big Boss Chen Jiancheng, was arrested whilst dining out at a restaurant in China. Chinese authorities caught onto the network and the key players. They targeted the corrupt facilitators, in this instance a corrupt Customs Officer. Then followed the money, eventually seizing the assets of the Chen organised crime group. By December 2020, 17 members of the group had been convicted for their roles in trafficking 20.22 tonnes of ivory – equivalent to approximately 2000 elephants – from Nigeria to China. This case is a blueprint for law enforcement agencies investigating transnational organised wildlife crime.

The Hague: Wildlife Justice Commission, 2022. 56p.

By Jenny Feltham.

Through its own investigations and intelligence analysis, the Wildlife Justice Commission has also collected evidence of criminal networks that are dealing in wildlife alongside other illicit commodities. This report aims to present some of these examples, along with information collected from open sources, to contribute to the knowledge base on this issue. It sets out 12 case studies that illustrate a range of converging crime types and typologies that have transpired in different regions of the world to increase the understanding of how these intersections can occur on the ground. The case studies include six cases involving the trafficking of terrestrial wild animals, three cases involving fisheries crimes, and three cases involving timber crimes (although they are collectively referred to as wildlife crime throughout the report). The cases demonstrate that criminal groups may have a range of motivations to diversify their activities and engage in wildlife or other types of crime Convergence can occur opportunistically on an adhoc basis, as a complete “career shift” in response to changing conditions, or as part of a diversification strategy to increase profits across a range of illicit commodities. It can also occur transactionally when criminal groups in different markets exchange goods or services with each other or could be embedded to such an extent that the crimes are inextricably linked.

The Hague: Wildlife Justice Commission, 2021. 53p.

By S.K. Witting.

With access to and usage of it increasing dramatically over the past 20 years, the Internet has become an emerging realm for human interaction. With children constituting one-third of Internet users worldwide, this realm offers endless opportunities to learn, connect, and interact. At the same time, the Internet facilitates child sexual abuse on a large scale – through the production, dissemination, and accessing of child sexual abuse material.This study aims to critically analyse emerging aspects of the international and national regulation, investigation and prosecution of online child sexual abuse material from a child-rights and rule-of-law-based approach. It investigates emerging aspects of substantive and procedural law which have been little explored in the past, zooming in on complex constitutional aspects by applying a comparative legal analysis approach with a strong focus on the Global South as well as interdisciplinary legal research.In order to solve these complex legal issues, the answer lies in the identification and subsequent navigation of a variety of dichotomies that govern the discourse on online child sexual abuse material. The international and national regulation, investigation and prosecution of emerging aspects of online child sexual abuse material hence require constant identification, reflection and calibration of competing discourses, with a view to developing a cyber-specific yet victim-sensitive response that upholds the rule of law and takes a child-centred approach.

Leiden: Leiden University, 2020. 158p.

By Yasemin Karamik And Kathrine von Graevenitz.

Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of air pollution on crime in large cities. We provide first evidence on the potential effect of air pollution on criminal activity using a broader set of geographical regions with lower air pollution levels. We use a unique combination of daily crime data with weather and emission records for the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg (BW) and Rhineland-Palatinate (RLP) in Germany from 2015 until 2017. We exploit the variation in air pollution which is attributable to changes in daily wind direction. We find that an increase of one standard deviation of PM10 leads to an increase in crime of 4.6%.

Mannheim, Germany: ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, 2002. 47p.

By Mika Junninen.

This study concentrates on Finnish professional criminals1 and their organisations in Finland and in cross-border crime operations. It is based on qualitative empirical material. The basic idea of this study was developed when working on the study “Crime across the Border - Finnish Professional Criminals and Estonian Crime Opportunities” (Junninen 1999). In the course of that study, it became clear that some Finnish professional criminals are working closely together and taking advantage of the national border, and have a good relationship with the Estonian underworld when committing crimes either in Finland or in Estonia. In the present study, I focus on 14 different Finnish groups active in the 1990s in smuggling (alcohol, tobacco and drugs), and/or procuring prostitutes, and/or handling stolen goods. The objective was to gather collective information about the world of the Finnish professional criminals by studying the personal characteristics of the group members, the crimes they commit, and the structures of the criminal groups. According to Finnish police sources, Finnish professional criminals have in recent years widened their scope of activity, become more violent and started to work more closely together (Häkämies 1999). In the overviews made by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, when EU standards for defining organised crime groups2 are applied, there were 27 organised crime groups active in Finland in 1999. The number of such groups has increased rapidly: in 1995, police identified only 10 active groups in Finland. (NBI 2000)3 . In addition, the criminal justice system operators of the European Union countries have paid attention to the growing organised crime problem and its impact on the work of the judges and prosecutors in member countries. In consequence, the EU created a European justice network in Amsterdam in 1997. In the network meetings, judges and prosecutors practise co-operation of authorities for solving cases where an organised crime group is operating in several EU countries. (Vallisaari 1997.) The global and national lack of information and studies concerning organised crime in general, and the internal and international relations of its participants made this research phenomenon more interesting and challenging.

Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI), 2006. 202p.

By Jennifer Paterson, Mark A Walters, Rupert Brown, and Harriet Fearn.

This report summarises the findings from a five year research project, the Sussex Hate Crime Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The aim was to examine the indirect impacts of hate crimes – how hate attacks on members of a community affect the thoughts, emotions and behaviours of other members of that community. The project focused on hate crimes targeted against LGB&T and Muslim communities and used a variety of different research methods, including questionnaire surveys, individual interviews and social psychological experiments.

Sussex, UK: University of Sussex, 2018. 54p.

By Minna Viuhko and Anniina Jokinen.

Research on human trafficking and organised crime is relatively rare in Finland. During the recent years human trafficking, procuring and prostitution have been studied i.a. in a legal perspective (Roth 2007a; 2007b; 2008), in relation to cross-border prostitution (Marttila 2004; 2005a; 2005b; 2006; 2008), and in the context of commercialisation of sex (Jyrkinen 2005). The problems of identifying the victims of human trafficking (Putkonen 2008) and trafficking in women and illegal immigration (Lehti and Aromaa 2003) have also been examined, as well as the effects of globalization on the sex industry in Finland (Penttinen 2004). In addition, Finnish sex-workers (Kontula 2008), prostitution in Northern Finland (Skaffari and Urponen 2004; Korhonen 2003), sex bars (Lähteenmaa and Näre 1994; Näre and Lähteenmaa 1995; Näre 1998), and sex buyers (Keeler & Jyrkinen 1999) have been the focus of recent research. Also organised pandering and prostitution in Finland was studied in the beginning of the 2000s (Leskinen 2003). Organised crime is scrutinised by Junninen (2006) and Bäckman (2006). However, the connection between human trafficking and organised crime has not been a central focus of any specific recent study in Finland. It also seems that prostitution and procuring markets have changed during the recent years and because of this, new studies on the issue are needed. Although human trafficking, prostitution and organised crime have been researched extensively in the global context, in this report we refer mainly to the earlier Finnish studies. The aim is to provide a comprehensive view of the Finnish prostitution-related human trafficking situation in the context of organised crime. We approach the topic from a sociological perspective and with qualitative methods. This study covers the first decade of the 21st century.

Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI), 2009. 143p.

Edited by Gergana Bulanova-Hristova, Karsten Kasper, Geralda Odinot, Maite Verhoeven, Ronald Pool, Christianne de Poot, Yael Werner and Lars Korsell.

The threats arising from different types of cybercrime are real and constantly evolving, as the internet with its anonymity and borderless reach provides new opportunities for physical and virtual criminal activities. We can see complex cybercriminal networks connecting subgroups and also single individuals that are active on, through and against the internet. At the same time there are also ‘offline’ criminal organisations using the internet to facilitate their activities and to increase their profit. Even so-called ‘traditional’ organised crime groups are widening their criminal portfolios by committing cybercrime. By constantly evolving online opportunities, their acts of ‘traditional crimes’ become even more far-reaching and damaging, thus benefiting the criminal organisation. It is not only the involvement of organised crime in cybercrime that is dangerous, but also cybercrime committed in an organised manner. Cyber-OC represents the convergence of these two phenomena. Despite the huge threat arising from its cumulative character, Cyber-OC is frequently underestimated and differently defined even by law enforcement authorities.

Wiesbaden: Bundeskriminalamt Criminalistic Institute, 2016. 298p.

By Dr. Christoph Birkel, Daniel Church, Dina Hummelsheim-Doss, Nathalie Leitgöb-Guzy, and Dietrich Oberwittler.

As megatrends, globalisation and digitisation are bringing about rapid changes, including in Germany. They are opening up a range of new opportunities, not only in the fields of economics, science and culture, but also in the way we access information, communicate with each other and participate in political and societal decision-making processes. But these new opportunities are being undermined by a highly uneven distribution of the benefits of globalisation and digitisation. This is a worrying development, since the resulting inequalities not only increase the risk of transnational conflicts, struggles over resource allocation and mass migration, but also threaten civil peace and social cohesion in the societies affected by these developments. The direct and indirect repercussions caused by such tensions are being felt across Germany as well, for instance in the form of an ongoing terrorist threat on our continent, an increasingly harsh political discourse, political radicalisation and forms of politically motivated crime, as well as through the ways in which organised crime and criminal clan structures are challenging the rule of law. These developments are fuelling a feeling of insecurity, which in the wake of digitisation is being amplified by the fact that, on the one hand, access to information is becoming easier, faster and more comprehensive, while, on the other hand, the authenticity of that very information is becoming increasingly difficult to validate. Free and unrestricted access to knowledge and information is a precious good, as it promotes informational participation for broad segments of society and increases transparency and democratic control. At the same time, however, it is also becoming easier to disseminate inaccurate information on a large scale, or even launch targeted disinformation campaigns or manipulate public opinion in a time in which the need for reliable sources is greater than ever. This is especially true for safety, where “fake news” can have a momentous impact in a very short space of time. Although representative studies and surveys have shown the current level of safety in Germany to be relatively high, various surveys have indicated that the German public often perceives the risks to be higher. This is why representative victimisation surveys and other tools are indispensable. They make visible the gap between perception and fear, on the one hand, and statistics and scientific findings, on the other. This knowledge can help us to design targeted information campaigns to dispel such perceived threats and feelings of insecurity. Representative victimisation surveys can also help us to identify actual increases in crime rates, introduce appropriate countermeasures and update official crime figures by shedding light on the dark figure of unreported or hidden crime. In addition, knowing the reasons why victims report, or choose not to report, an offence they have experienced will also allow us to improve criminal prosecution approaches in the future. Enriched by comprehensive insights into crime-relevant factors, victimisation surveys have the potential to deliver the crucial insights needed to successfully address the safety-related challenges of the present. Following up on the first German Victimisation Survey (Deutscher Viktimisierungssurvey, DVS) undertaken in 2012, the 2017 survey provides us with fresh sets of data to assess the development of crime and crime-related attitudes in Germany. Based on a nationwide, representative sample of the German population aged 16 and over, the 2017 survey not only yields insights regarding the current security situation and perceived safety across the population, it also allows us to draw conclusions by looking at the developments and changes since 2012.

Wiesbaden: Bundeskriminalamt - BKA, 2019. 127p.

By J.J.M. van Dijk, P. Mayhew, and M. Killias.

The international victimization survey reported here measured experience of crïme and a number of other crime-related issues in a large number of European and non-European countries. It used tightly standardized methods as regards the sampling procedure, method of interview, questions asked, and analysis of the data. By asking respondents directly about a range of offences that they had experienced over a given time period, the survey provides a measure of the level of crime in different countrïes that is independent of the conventional one of offences recorded by the police. The police measure has well-known limitations for comparative purposes as it is based only on those crimes which are reported to the police by victims, and which are recorded by the police. The value of the survey is that it: - enables individual countries to see how they are faring in comparison with others in relation to crime levels; - provîdes some rough picture of the extent to which survey-measured crime in different countries matches the picture from figures of offences recorded by the police; - provides some basis for explaining major differences in crime experience in terms, for instance, of socio-demographic variables; - allows some examination of the types of people most at risk of victimization for different types of crime, and whether these vaiy across the jurisdictions in the survey; and, finally, - provides information on responses to crime in different countries, such as opinions about the police, appropriate sentences, fear of crime, and the use of various crime prevention measures. These survey results should not be seen as giving a definitive picture of crime, and responses to it in different countries. The samples of respondents interviewed in each country were relatively small, only those with a telephone at home were interviewed, and response rates were not always high. The significance of these factors is taken up in more detail in the final chapter, but the fact remains that the comparable information provided by the international suivey is unique.

Deventer; Boston: Kluwer Law and Taxation Publishers 1990. 191p.

By P. Mayhew, and J.J.M. van Dijk.

The International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) is the most far-reaching programme of fully standardised sample surveys looking at householders' experience of crime in different countries. The first ICVS took place in 1989, the second in 1992, and the third in 1996. Surveys have been carried out in over 50 countries since 1989, including a large number of city surveys in developing countries and countries in transition. This report deals with eleven industrialised countries which took part in the third sweep. The reason for setting up the ICVS was the inadequacy of other measures of crime across country. Figures of offences recorded by the police are problematic due to differences in the way the police define, record and count crime. And since most crimes the police know about are reported by victims, police figures can differ simply because of differences in reporting behaviour. It is also difficult to make comparisons of independently organised crime surveys, as these differ in design and coverage. For the countries covered in this report, interviews were mainly conducted by telephone (with samples selected through variants of random digit dialling). There is no reason to think results are biased because of the telephone mode. Response rates varied hut we show that there is no overriding evidence that this affects the count of victimisation. Samples were usually of 1,000 or 2,000 people which means there is a fairly wide sampling error on the ICVS estimates. The surveys cannot, then, give precise estimates of crime in different countries. But they are a unique source of information and give good comparative information. The results in this report relate mainly to respondents' experience of crime in 1995, the year prior to the 1996 survey. Those interviewed were asked about crimes they had experienced, whether or not reported to the police.

The Hague: WODC, 1997. 116p.

By Jan van Dijk John van Kesteren Paul Smit.

The International Crime Victims Survey became operational in 1989. The main object was to seek advancement in international comparative criminological research, beyond the constraints of officially recorded crime data. The next sweeps of the ICVS surveys took place in 1992, 1996 and 2000. With its fifth sweep in 2005 the initiative has developed into a truly unique global project. Over a time span of fifteen years more than 300,000 people were interviewed about their experiences with victimisation and related subjects in 78 different countries. This report describes the 2004 – 2005 sweep of surveys in 30 countries and 33 capital or main cities and compares results with those of earlier sweeps. A large portion of the latest data in this report comes from the European Survey on Crime and Safety (EU ICS), organised by a consortium lead by Gallup Europe, co-financed by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Technology Development. The ICVS is the most comprehensive instrument developed yet to monitor and study volume crimes, perception of crime and attitudes towards the criminal justice system in a comparative, international perspective. The data are from surveys amongst the general public and therefore not influenced by political or ideological agendas of governments of individual countries. Standardisation of questionnaires used and other aspects of data collection assure that data can, within confidence margins, be reliably compared across countries. Independent reviews have attested to the comparability of ICVS results (e.g. Lynch, 2006). The ICVS started in 1989 in 14 industrialised countries. City surveys were also piloted in Warsaw, Poland and Surabaya, Indonesia. Already in the second sweep coverage was enlarged by including several countries in Eastern Central Europe. Fieldwork in some of these countries was funded by the Ministry for Development Aid of the Netherlands. For these countries the project played a part in the process of modernising criminal justice systems after Western European models. Many of those countries have now become part of the European Union. Where most industrialised countries have a long tradition of publishing statistics on police-recorded crime, in many developing countries crime data are either fragmented, of poor quality or not available to the public. Crime victim surveys in these countries, although restricted to the capital or main cities, is often the only available source of statistical information on crime and victimisation. Internationally comparable crime victim surveys not only serve policy purposes but make data available that can be used by researchers interested in crime in a comparative context, including in developing countries from different regions of the world.

The Hague: WODC; Boom Juridische uitgevers: 2007. 292p.

By R. S. van Wegberg.

Many scientific studies and industry reports have observed the emergence of so-called cybercrime-as-a-service. The idea is that specialized suppliers in the underground economy cater to criminal entrepreneurs in need of certain capabilities – substituting specialized technical knowledge with “knowing what to buy”. The impact of this trend could be dramatic, as technical skill becomes an insignificant entry barrier for cybercrime. Forms of cybercrime motivated by financial gain, make use of a unique configuration of technical capabilities to be successful. Profit-driven cybercrimes, as they are called, range from carding to financial malware, and from extortion to cryptojacking. Given their reliance on technical capabilities, particularly these forms of cybercrime benefit from a changing crime paradigm: the commoditization of cybercrime. That is, standardized offerings of technical capabilities supplied through structured markets by specialized vendors that cybercriminals can contract to fulfill tools and techniques used in their business model. Commoditization enables outsourcing of components used in cybercrime - i.e., a botnet or cash-out solution. Thus lowering entry barriers for aspiring criminals, and potentially driving further growth in cybercrime. As many cybercriminal entrepreneurs lack the skills to provision certain parts of their business model, this incentivizes them to outsource these parts to specialized criminal vendors. With online anonymous markets - like Silk Road or AlphaBay - these entrepreneurs have found a new platform to contract vendors and acquire technical capabilities for a range of cybercriminal business models. A configuration of technical capabilities used in a business model reflects the value chain of resources. Here, not the criminal activities themselves, but the technical enablers for all these criminal activities are depicted. To create a comprehensive understanding of how businessmodels in profit-driven cybercrime are impacted by the commoditization of cybercrime, we investigate how outsourced components can fulfill technical capabilities needed in profit-driven cybercrime. This is where we use an economic lens to deliver an overview of criminal activities, resources and strategies in profit-driven cybercrime. In turn, knowing how outsourcing fulfils A study into the treatment of victims and its effects on their attitudes and behaviourparts of the value chain, can help law enforcement exploit ‘chokepoints’ – i.e., use the weakest link in the value chain where criminals appear to be vulnerable.

Delft University of Technology, 2020. 202p.

By Grace E. A.Di Meo.

The historiography of female violence has largely centred on women’s experiences as victims or on their perpetration of lethal acts such as murder and infanticide. In the last decade, however, scholars have paid increasing attention to women’s perpetration of non-lethal violent crime. This thesis contributes to recent scholarship by examining female acts of assault in late Victorian and Edwardian England in an understudied region of the country: whilst most historians have focused on the North, South East or Midlands, this study draws attention to the South West of the country and situates women’s acts of minor violence within the context of wider national patterns. Focusing specifically on cases prosecuted at the Exeter and Cheltenham magistrates’ courts in the years 1880-1909, the thesis follows women through different stages of their offending trajectories: the perpetration of their acts; their treatment by magistrates; their portrayal in the media; and, finally, their experiences after facing prosecution.

Using evidence from court records, newspapers and census returns, the study employs both quantitative and qualitative analyses in order to examine patterns in the perpetration and outcome of female non-lethal violence. These examinations reveal that women’s ‘expected’ and ‘actual’ roles – especially those relating to motherhood, wifehood and the neighbourhood – impacted not only the ways in which their assaults were committed but also on their treatment by the justice system and the media. It is also demonstrated that women’s positions could contribute to their propensity to reoffend, an action which sometimes resulted in women’s marginalisation in post-offending life. By following the women’s experiences from the onset to aftermath of their violence, this thesis offers an original and comprehensive contribution to the historiography of female violence in late Victorian and Edwardian England.

Bristol, UK: University of Bristol 2020. 264p.

National Research Council.

Most major crime in this country emanates from two major data sources. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports has collected information on crimes known to the police and arrests from local and state jurisdictions throughout the country. The National Crime Victimization Survey, a general population survey designed to cover the extent, nature, and consequences of criminal victimization, has been conducted annually since the early1970s. This workshop was designed to consider similarities and differences in the methodological problems encountered by the survey and criminal justice research communities and what might be the best focus for the research community. In addition to comparing and contrasting the methodological issues associated with self-report surveys and official records, the workshop explored methods for obtaining accurate self-reports on sensitive questions about crime events, estimating crime and victimization in rural counties and townships and developing unbiased prevalence and incidence rates for rate events among population subgroups.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2003. 111p.

National Research Council

The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) measures the rates at which Americans are victims of crimes, including rape and sexual assault, but there is concern that rape and sexual assault are undercounted on this survey. BJS asked the National Research Council to investigate this issue and recommend best practices for measuring rape and sexual assault on their household surveys. Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault concludes that it is likely that the NCVS is undercounting rape and sexual assault. The most accurate counts of rape and sexual assault cannot be achieved without measuring them separately from other victimizations, the report says. It recommends that BJS develop a separate survey for measuring rape and sexual assault. The new survey should more precisely define ambiguous words such as "rape," give more privacy to respondents, and take other steps that would improve the accuracy of responses. Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault takes a fresh look at the problem of measuring incidents of rape and sexual assault from the criminal justice perspective. This report examines issues such as the legal definitions in use by the states for these crimes, best methods for representing the definitions in survey instruments so that their meaning is clear to respondents, and best methods for obtaining as complete reporting as possible of these crimes in surveys, including methods whereby respondents may report anonymously.

Rape and sexual assault are among the most injurious crimes a person can inflict on another. The effects are devastating, extending beyond the initial victimization to consequences such as unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, sleep and eating disorders, and other emotional and physical problems. Understanding the frequency and context under which rape and sexual assault are committed is vital in directing resources for law enforcement and support for victims. These data can influence public health and mental health policies and help identify interventions that will reduce the risk of future attacks. Sadly, accurate information about the extent of sexual assault and rape is difficult to obtain because most of these crimes go unreported to police. Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault focuses on methodology and vehicles used to measure rape and sexual assaults, reviews potential sources of error within the NCVS survey, and assesses the training and monitoring of interviewers in an effort to improve reporting of these crimes.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2014. 278p.

United Nations Office on Drug and Crime

The heedless exploitation of nature by humans has led to unprecedented biodiversity loss and a worsening climate crisis. It is also a threat to human health, as highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, transferred from animals to humans, facilitated by environmental destruction and wildlife crime. Links between the global health crisis and the illegal exploitation of wildlife have been in the spotlight since it was suggested that wet markets selling wildlife, in this case pangolins, could have facilitated the transfer of COVID-19 to humans. The spike in public awareness of this connection has led to a push for new bans on the sale of wild animals for consumption. It is against this backdrop that the second edition of the World Wildlife Crime Report is published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The report shows wildlife crime to be a business that is global; lucrative, with high demand driving high prices; and extremely widespread. Nearly 6,000 different species of fauna and flora have been seized between 1999 and 2018, with nearly every country in the world playing a role in the illicit wildlife trade

Vienna; New York: UNODC, 2020. 134p.