by David M. Adamson, Annie Brothers, Sasha Romanosky, Marjory S. Blumenthal, Douglas C. Ligor, Karlyn D. Stanley, Peter Schirmer, Julia Vidal Verástegui

Social media and other sophisticated communications technology have enabled a new kind of crime: cyberstalking. Cyberstalking involves using communications technology in threatening ways to stalk, harass, or share embarrassing information about victims, and it often involves the threat of intimate partner violence. As online platforms and messaging technologies have multiplied, cyberstalking has become more prevalent. Yet the problem has been understudied, and its dynamics are not well known.

In this report, the authors enhance the understanding of cyberstalking by offering the first empirical analysis on federal cyberstalking cases: In particular, they analyze the number of federal cyberstalking cases filed over time, the characteristics of these cases, and the outcomes of these cases. The results of in-depth interviews with prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and victims' advocacy representatives are also presented.

Key Findings

• The number of federally prosecuted cyberstalking cases has grown steadily since 2014, reaching a peak of 80 cases filed in 2019 (then falling slightly in 2020), with 412 total cases filed between 2010 and 2020.

• In the majority of federally prosecuted cyberstalking cases, the victim knew the offender.

• The legal system is underprepared to handle cyberstalking cases: Law enforcement is seldom able to prioritize or allot substantial resources to cyberstalking, and many agents and officers lack training in how to investigate the crime or help victims.

• A major challenge in prosecuting cyberstalking cases involves tying the digital evidence to the offending individual or group because tech-savvy offenders can be sophisticated at hiding digital tracks.

Recommendations

• Update awareness campaigns regarding online safety beyond antiquated notions of "stranger danger," and develop better warnings and indicators of potentially harmful online activities.

• Clarify cyberstalking legal statutes by removing the "intent to harm" clause from the federal cyberstalking law because it unintentionally protects some harmful behaviors.

• Recognize the complicated nature of working with victims and promote ways of improving trust between victims and the criminal justice system.

• Increase resources and information on emerging technology and investigative strategies available to law enforcement.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023.

By Marcos Alan Ferreira, Oliver P. Richmond

This article analyses how criminal governance creates blockages that prevent peace formation in Latin America. Two blockages emerge where criminal governance prevails: criminal structures do not reduce violence and also take advantage of cultural and structural violence; their legitimacy pushes the state away from citizens. Consequently, civil society usually responds in two ways: promoting alternative forms of political praxis against violence; fostering dialogue between political actors and civil society while building broader networks. Our argument shows that local agency has potential competences and the knowledge necessary to address criminal governance discursively, but its capacity to effect structural change is limited in direct terms.

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Volume 15, 2021 - Issue 2

By Oluwole Ojewale

This study examines the governance framework for regulating fishing generally in the Republic of the Congo. Specifically, it analyses the drivers and enablers of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) shark fishing and the networks engaged in the criminal economy. The illicit activities linked to shark fishing and fin trading negatively impact ocean biodiversity, the local and national economies. New ways of thinking are needed for effective responses to IUU shark fishing in the country. Key findings • The illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of sharks is driven by local and international demand for shark products. It is further enabled by a lack of state capacity to oversee and enforce legislation and control. • Actors in the criminal supply chain of shark products include artisanal fisherfolk, foreign industrial trawlers, middlemen traders from African countries and Asia, and local women. • The exploitation of shark species negatively impacts environmental biodiversity and has disrupted the ecosystem in the Republic of the Congo’s ocean. • Overfishing of sharks is resulting in juvenile catches, especially of species of conservational concern 

ENACT Africa, 2024. 29p.

By Renato De Almeida Arão Galhardi

Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates. (Working Paper)

Toronto: Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS) and the CERC in Migration and Integration 2023. 23p.

By KPMG Australia  

The Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) set a new standard for modern slavery disclosures in Australia. The Act required entities with a consolidated annual revenue of $100 million or more to disclose their efforts in identifying and addressing modern slavery risks within their operations and supply chain. The objective of the Act was to provide a framework to assist with proactively and effectively addressing modern slavery. 

The 2023 independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, commissioned by the Australian Government (Review), found that the Act had not resulted in meaningful change for people affected by modern slavery.  The review made 30 recommendations to strengthen modern slavery obligations for reporting entities, including the introduction of a positive requirement to conduct due diligence and the introduction of a federal Anti-Slavery Commissioner. The Government has highlighted that many of the Review’s recommendations are in line with key election commitments and introduced a Bill in November 2023 to establish an Anti-Slavery Commissioner. 

KPMG Australia, 2024. 31p.

By Lucía Dammert and Mary Fran T. Malone
In a region plagued by high rates of violent crime and repressive policing practices, Nicara-
gua has earned a reputation as exceptional. Despite poverty, inequality, and a historical legacy

 of political violence and repression, Nicaragua has defied regional trends. It has regis-
tered low rates of violent crime while deploying policing practices that emphasized preven-
tion over repression. April 2018 marked an end to this exceptionalism. Police attacked anti-
government protestors, and launched a sustained campaign against dissidents that continues
to the present day. While the Nicaraguan police had long cultivated a reputation as commu-
nity-oriented and non-repressive, they appeared to quickly change into a repressive, political
force. In this paper, we trace how the Nicaraguan police have evolved over time. Relying
upon longitudinal data from 1996-2019 from the Latin American Public Opinion Project, we
trace the process of police reform in Nicaragua, and analyse public attitudes towards the
police as these reforms unfolded. 

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, No. 110 (July-December 2020), pp. 79-99 (21 pages)

By Wilson Hernández, Lucía Dammert, and Lilian Kanashiro

Latin America is a violent region where fear of crime is well spread but still not fully understood. Using multilevel methods for a large and subnational representative household survey (N = 271,022), we assess the determinants of fear of crime in Peru, the country with the highest fear of crime and crime victimization in the region. Our results show that body-aimed victimization (physical or sexual abuse from a member of their household, and sexual offenses) is the strongest driver of fear of crime, even higher than armed victimization. Moreover, safety measures based on social capital are negatively related to fear of crime, suggesting that they are palliatives rather than real protections. Finally, our study shows that people in a higher socioeconomic status are more likely to fear more because they have more (resources) to lose. Policy implications address Latin America as a whole and punitive policies against crime are common in the region, while evidence-based decisions are scarce.  Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 2020, Vol. 53(4) 515–535

By  Mary Fran T. Malone & Lucia Dammert 

 Over the past two decades, most Latin American countries have struggled to create or reform their police forces while simultaneously confronting sharp increases in violent crime. Reformers have gravitated towards community-oriented policing practices, which aim to rely on preventive tactics and build closer ties between police officers and the public. The implementation of such policing practices can be daunting, particularly for countries with authoritarian histories of policing and/or military repression. When confronting rising crime rates, some new democracies are tempted to revert to authoritarian policing practices and circumvent constitutional safeguards on human rights and civil liberties. Still, some countries have resisted such temptations, and seriously invested in community-oriented policing practices. However, do these communityoriented policing practices lead citizens to trust the police more? Or does public trust depend more heavily on results – particularly in countries undergoing crises in public security? To answer these questions, we analyze public trust in the police in 17 Latin American countries through a series of regression analyses of the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s (LAPOP) 2016–2017 survey data. We find that community-oriented policing practices tend to garner more public trust, but that perceptions of police effectiveness are equally important.  

POLICING AND SOCIETY, 2020.  

By Alejandra Luneke, Lucia Dammert,  Liza Zuñiga  

Crime increase in Latin America has occurred in parallel with a change in police policy in territories. Along with the processes of militarization and police repression, strategies of co-production have been inspired by community policing, but the articulation of both in urban margins has been understudied. Our hypothesis affirms the coexistence and ambivalence of both social assistance and abusive practices against the city's poor. Qualitative methods conducted in Santiago, Chile, show police policy involves both dimensions, which are strongly rooted in identity elements of the military tradition of the region's police forces.

Dilemas, Rev. Estud. Conflito Controle Soc. – Rio de Janeiro – Vol. 15 – no 1 – JAN-ABR 2022 – pp. 1-26  

By Renato de Almeida Arão Galhardi 

  Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates.   

Working Paper No. 2023/07 September 2023  

Toronto: Metropolitan University, 2023. 23p.

By Min-Taec Kim and George Karystianis (UNSW)
AIM To construct a measure of coercive control behaviours from free-text narratives recorded by the NSW Police Force for each domestic violence event, and to assess how useful this measure might be in detecting coercive control behaviours when combined with existing measures and/ or predicting which events are followed by violence within 12 months. METHOD We developed a text-mining system to capture a (non-exhaustive) set of behaviours that could be used to exert coercive control. Our text mining system consisted of a set of rules and dictionaries, with our definition of ‘coercive control behaviours’ drawn from Stark (2007). We concentrated on behaviours that were not already well captured by fixed fields in the police system. We applied this text mining system across all police narratives of domestic violence events recorded between 1 January 2009 and 31 March 2020, and used this data to construct our measure of coercive control behaviour. We then compared the incidence of coercive control behaviours using our measure against existing incident categories (where they exist). Finally, we estimated a gradient boosted decision tree (xgboost) model three times (once with standard predictors, once with just our coercive control measure, and once with both sets of variables included) and compared the performance of each model. This allowed us to estimate the contribution of our measure for improving the prediction of future violence. RESULTS There were 852,162 behaviours extracted by the text-mining system across 526,787 domestic violence events, with 57% of these events having at least one coercive control behaviour detected and 8% having three or more distinct subcategories of coercive control behaviours. These events were associated with 223,645 unique persons of interest. Our text mining system agreed with the pre-existing police incident categories (where they exist) in 80 to 99% of cases, with the text mining approach identifying an additional 30 to 60% of events that were not identified using the police incident categories, depending on the behaviour. The inclusion of the text mining variables did not improve the performance of our predictive model. CONCLUSION Our text mining system successfully extracted coercive control behaviours from police narratives, allowing us to identify how often these events are recorded in police narratives and supplement existing police categories of DV behaviours. Use of our measure in conjunction with existing incident categories significantly expands our ability to identify coercive control behaviours, however it does not improve our ability to predict which events are followed by further domestic violence.  

Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB260. No. 26o
Sydney:  NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. 2023. 28p.

By Stephanie Ramsey, Min-Taec Kim and Jackie Fitzgerald  
AIM This paper describes the significant rise in incidents of domestic violence-related stalking and intimidation recorded in NSW over the 10 years to 2021 and their passage through the criminal justice system. METHOD Characteristics of stalking/intimidation incidents from 2012 to 2021 were collated from the NSW Police and Criminal Courts databases. We focus on those flagged as ‘domestic violencerelated’. Additional information about these incidents was obtained through text mining 12,676 police domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation narratives. RESULTS Key findings: • Domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents recorded by NSW Police increased 110 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 8,120 to 17,063). • Police legal proceedings for domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents increased 163.8 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 4,469 to 11,789). • Domestic violence-related ‘stalking/intimidation’ typically involves threats, intimidation and verbal abuse (not stalking). • Court appearances including a domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation charge increased 63.8 percent from 2014 to 2021 (from 3,562 to 5,836). • Courts consider domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation seriously, with one in eight offenders sentenced to a custodial penalty. The number of custodial sentences increased 96.1% from 2014 to 2021 (from 311 to 610). • The increase in stalking/intimidation has had a pronounced effect on Aboriginal people who accounted for 28% of court finalisations and 52% of custodial penalties in 2021. The number of Aboriginal people receiving a custodial penalty increased 101% in eight years from 158 in 2014 to 317 in 2021. CONCLUSION The substantial increase in stalking/intimidation offences in the criminal justice system seems more likely to reflect changes in the police response to domestic violence rather than a change in criminal behaviour. 
  (Bureau Brief No. 159).
 Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2022. 19p.

By Felix Leung and Lily Trimboli
Background

Previous research has shown that the NSW Police Force’s Domestic Violence Safety Assessment Tool, the DVSAT, has poor predictive accuracy in discriminating those who experience intimate partner re-victimisation from those who do not (Ringland, 2018). The aim of this study was to develop a tool with better predictive accuracy than the DVSAT. Using police data on 234,454 incidents of intimate partner violence recorded between January 2016 and December 2018, we evaluated four predictive models of intimate partner re-victimisation:
• NRAP-all: a model with all 16 risk factors identified in the National Risk Assessment Principles (NRAP) developed by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS);
• NRAP-10: a model with only the 10 high-risk factors identified by ANROWS in the NRAP;
• SAFVR: the Static Assessment of Family Violence Recidivism (SAFVR), developed by the New Zealand Police; and
• DVSAT-8: a model with the eight items from the NSW DVSAT that are most predictive of repeat victimisation.

Key findings

Of the four models, only the two NRAP models had acceptable predictive performance (i.e., with an Area under the Curve (AUC) above 0.7). The model with the highest AUC was the NRAP model that combined all 16 risk factors identified by ANROWS (with an average AUC of 0.732). When tested on unseen data, its out-of-sample AUC was similar, at 0.738. The simpler NRAP-10 model performed only slightly worse with an average AUC of 0.728.
Further analysis found that the best performing NRAP model could be simplified, with almost no loss in predictive performance. Of the 16 risk factors in the NRAP model, a simplified model using only the best five predictors delivered an out-of-sample AUC of 0.734.

(Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 244).    

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crimes Statistics and Research, 2022. 27p.

By Adam Teperski and Stewart Boiteux

AIM To examine whether longer apprehended domestic violence orders (ADVO) are associated with changes in domestic violence (DV) offending and ADVO breaches. METHOD A dataset of 13,717 defendants who were placed on an ADVO after a DV incident between January 2016 and April 2018 was extracted from the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics and Research’s ADVO database. This included 10,820 defendants subject to a final 12-month order, and 2,897 defendants subject to a final 24-month order. We utilised an entropy balancing matching approach to ensure groups of defendants subjected to differing ADVO lengths were comparable and implemented an event study analysis to examine quarterly differences in offending outcomes in the three years after the start of the order. In doing so, we were able to examine relative differences in offending in the first 12 months (where both groups were subject to an ADVO), the second 12 months (where only the 24-month ADVO group were subject to an ADVO), and the third 12 months (where neither group were subject to an ADVO). RESULTS In the 12 to 24 month period, where ADVOs with a longer duration were active and shorter ADVOs were not, longer ADVOs were associated with increased breach offending and decreased DV offending. Specifically, in the 5th, 6th and 7th quarters after the beginning of a final order we observed 3.4 percentage points (p.p.), 4.1 p.p., and 2.3 p.p. increases in defendants breaching their ADVO, respectively. When considering baseline rates of breaching, this represents relative increases of 79% to 161%. In the 5th, 6th, and 7th quarters after the beginning of a finalised order, longer ADVOs were associated with respective 1.8 p.p., 2.0 p.p., and 3.1 p.p. decreases in DV offending, reflecting relative decreases in DV offending by 41% to 59%. We find no group differences in DV offending or breaches in the subsequent 12 months, when ADVOs for both groups had expired. While the study examined multiple factors related to both longer ADVO length and offending, we cannot exclude the possibility that unobserved factors may be influencing our results. CONCLUSION Relative to 12-month ADVOs, 24-month ADVOs were associated with an increase in the probability that an offender breaches the conditions of their ADVO, and a decrease in the probability that an offender commits a proven DV offence.
Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB261; no. 221
Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2023. 34p.

By Chris Dyke, Carol Rivas, Karen Schucan Bird

This study, the first to examine parole decisions for perpetrators of domestic violence in England and Wales, examines how parole boards reach decisions through a thematic analysis of interviews with 20 Parole Board members, alongside logistic regressions of all 137 parole decisions about perpetrators in an 18-month period. In this sample, recommendations of professionals, especially psychologists, were by far the strongest predictor of a release decision. The nature of offending was also significant in predicting release. Size and composition of the panel may also affect decisions. More panel members, and longitudinal feedback, may encourage more reflective, considered decision making.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice,  22 January 2024

By  Timothy Cubitt and Anthony Morgan

Risk assessment is a growing feature of law enforcement and an important strategy for identifying high-risk individuals, places and problems. Prediction models must be developed in a transparent way, using robust methods and the best available data. But attention must also be given to implementation. In practice, the data available to law enforcement from police information systems can be limited in their completeness, quality and accessibility. Prediction models need to be tested in as close to real-world settings as possible, including using less than optimal data, before they can be implemented and used. In this paper we replicate a prediction model that was developed in New South Wales to predict high-harm offending among outlaw motorcycle gangs nationally and in other states. We find that, even with a limited pool of data from a national police information system, high-harm offending can be predicted with a relatively high degree of accuracy. However, it was not possible to reproduce the same prediction accuracy achieved in the original model. Model accuracy varied between jurisdictions, as did the power of different predictive factors, highlighting the importance of considering context. There are trade-offs in real-world applications of prediction models and consideration needs to be given to what data can be readily accessed by law enforcement agencies to identify targets for prioritisation.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024, 47pg

By Jonathan Goodhand, Patrick Meehan, Camilo Acero, and Jan Koehler

This research paper is the second in a three-part series analysing the nexus between paramilitaries, illicit economies and organised crime in borderland and frontier regions. This research challenges the idea that paramilitaries are symptomatic of state breakdown, flourishing in marginal spaces suffering from ‘governance deficits’; and that they can primarily be understood as apolitical, predatory self-enriching actors, driven by economic motives, and operating outside formal political systems.

In this research paper, a set of detailed case studies are presented that explore coercive brokerage in Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar that seek to address these ideas, drawing upon data and analysis generated by a four-year Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project, Drugs & (Dis)order (https://drugs-disorder.soas.ac.uk), and other relevant research.

Birmingham, UK:  University of Birmingham. 2023, 65pg

By Kristina Amerhauser

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are a serious concern in the Mekong region, which includes Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Facilitated by state-embedded actors, each year vast amounts of illicit proceeds are generated, moved and laundered across the region and beyond in offshore tax havens. This distorts the local economies; deprives the state of income needed for health, education and infrastructure; and deepens inequality. This paper is part of a comparative research project that tests and applies the ‘IFFs pyramid’, a new framework of analysis of IFFs proposed by Reitano (2022), in the context of the Mekong region. Based on a review of secondary literature, it provides an overview of financial flows, trade flows and informality – the three main means by which IFFs are enabled, moved and held according to the ‘IFFs pyramid’ – and discusses how IFFs manifest across the Mekong. It finds that: • There is widespread evidence that each flow is significant in the Mekong and that flows converge and intersect. Nevertheless, current responses to IFFs almost entirely focus on the formal financial system. • Porous borders and strong trade relationships, including with neighbouring China, offer abundant and diverse opportunities for trade-based money laundering (TBML). Lack of capacity to identify misclassified goods and low cross-border collaboration are key impediments to its response. • There are a large number of special economic zones (SEZs), some of which are treated as ‘lawless zones’ where national governments have no authority. This creates widespread opportunities for value to be extracted, under-reported and comingled with legitimate flows. They have also been linked to other illicit markets, such as drug trafficking, the illegal wildlife trade (IWT), human trafficking and financial crimes, and provide the space to generate and launder illicit proceeds in a multitude of ways. • The big informal economy, coupled with the large number of people who remain outside the formal financial system, limits the efficiency of regulatory and oversight instruments. • Political will to tackle IFFs in the Mekong appears to be limited, in large part due to the involvement of Chinese actors. In fact, some actors in charge of the response to IFFs seem to have created loopholes to their own benefit. State-embedded actors are part of the problem, both as a source of IFFs as well as by further enabling them. This research shows that the IFFs pyramid proposed by Reitano (2022) is a helpful tool for organising information related to IFFs in the Mekong and for improving understanding of the major negative impact and harms that IFFs exert on societies and economies of the region  

SOC ACE Research Paper No. 30. University of Birmingham. 2023, 32pg

By  James Porteous

This report examines human trafficking linked to organised crime groups involved in illegal betting and related criminal activity in four key regions in Southeast Asia. Research was primarily via desktop information gathering conducted in 2022/23, supplemented by the expertise and existing knowledge of the Mekong Club and the Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime in human trafficking and illegal betting, respectively. Key findings are: • Tens of thousands of people are being held in modern slavery conditions to work in organised illegal betting and cyber-scam operations across Southeast Asia. • These operations, which are run by individuals with long histories of involvement in illegal betting and organised crime across Asia, are estimated to make at least USD 40 to 100 billion a year in illicit profits from such activity. • Some individuals are recruited on false job advertisements, have their passports removed and are kept in dormitories attached to fully contained casino compounds as forced labour to promote illegal betting websites and engage in industrial-scale cyber-fraud such as “pig butchering”, romance scams, and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes. • Workers are typically not permitted to leave without paying large ransoms to their captors, and can be sold and traded between organised crime groups. Fines for breaking rules or failing to hit monetary targets are added to victims’ ransoms. • Reports on victim testimony and online video shows “staff” being beaten with iron bars, shocked with cattle prods, tied up, and subject to other forms of torture. Female victims have been forced into sex work for failing to meet targets. • The groups running such operations have been active in organising and promoting gambling across Asia since at least the 1990s. Because many of the core activities in this business (e.g., movement of money across borders, violent debt collection, bribery of local officials, provision of related “entertainment” such as narcotics and sex), are illicit, such operations have by necessity been closely associated with, or directly run by, individuals with organised crime backgrounds. • In the early 2000s, this business was supercharged by the development of online gambling (both casino games and sports betting), run directly out of existing casinos or related properties, which massively increased the target market, and has grown to be a trillion dollar illegal industry funding organised crime. • Attempts to profit from this by governments in Southeast Asia, typically by licensing operators for a fee, have led to the spread of such operations across the region and had major negative impacts, including widespread corruption. It has also concentrated operations in self-contained compounds and so-called special economic zones which local police are often unwilling or unable to enter or investigate. • Hundreds of thousands of workers are required to serve the industry in marketing, customer recruitment, funds transfers, tech support and related fields. • Pre-pandemic, demand for workers was usually satisfied by voluntary means, although an unknown percentage of “voluntary” arrivals were held in modern-slavery like conditions, and there were related human trafficking aspects such as trafficking of sex workers to serve the industry. • This began to change in 2018 as a result of China’s growing concern over cross-border illegal betting, and change was accelerated massively by travel restrictions due to the pandemic, which cut off the supply of workers. • At the same time, the organised criminal groups had a key business line – land-based casinos – essentially closed down because of travel restrictions. As a result, they greatly expanded and developed existing cyber-scam operations, leveraging their expertise and technology in areas such as social media marketing, customer recruitment and cryptocurrency, which were in place from their online illegal betting operations. • Now, as the pandemic recedes, the organised crime groups running these operations have, in effect, hugely increased their potential revenue by complementing illegal betting with cyber-scam operations of comparable scale. • The success of such operations has been an enormous financial boon to organised crime, for whom cyber scams and illegal betting are just two of many illicit business lines that include money laundering as a service, illicit wildlife trafficking and production and distribution of methamphetamine and heroin. • The vast profits from such operations have provided plentiful ammunition to corrupt local authorities, and the operations in this group are frequently protected by powerful politicians and/or armed militias. • Global attention on the issue has not eliminated this activity, just displaced it into even more vulnerable jurisdictions, leading some to fear the industry could lead to geopolitical instability.   

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2023. 39p.

By Martin Purbrick  

The report provides an analysis of variable Betting Duty (tax) rates on racing and sports betting operators to assess the impact on legal markets of higher rates and the related impact on betting turnover in the illegal betting markets. The economic impact of excessive Betting Duty in the Internet age is to drive consumers to the illegal betting market.

  • The highest rate of Betting Duty noted is in Hong Kong, at 75% of GGR. • The lowest rate of Betting Duty noted is in South Africa, at 6% of GGR. • The median rate of Betting Duty noted is in France, at 37.7% of GGR. • The highest Betting Duty rate in Hong Kong exists with an estimated illegal market of USD 257 per head of population, with lessening illegal markets per head of population with correspondingly lower Betting Duty rates of USD 61 in Singapore (25% Betting Duty), USD 59 per head in South Africa (6.5%), USD30 in Australia (10% to 20%), and USD 11.44 in the USA (6.75% to 51%). • Betting Duty rates have an impact on the turnover in betting markets, causing customers to potentially move from legal (licensed) to illegal (unlicensed) betting channels. • Higher Betting Duty rates lead to an increased theoretical margin to betting odds (which betting operators build in to ensure a profit margin), consequent increases to the takeout rate of the operator, increased prices for the customer, and inevitably drive customers to illegal betting markets where odds are better value because of no take out rate. • Illegal betting operators pay no Betting Duty or any other taxes and hence have no theoretical margin relating to taxation costs. There is hence a permanent price differential between the legal and illegal betting markets, with illegal markets consequently offering better odds (prices) to consumers. Betting customers, like the consumers of most products, are price sensitive and all things being equal prefer a cheaper betting product. • Higher Betting Duty rates also have increasingly less impact on consumer protection (when intended to discourage betting and gambling in society) as raising rates has the impact of migrating customers from the more expensive legal to the less expensive illegal betting market.  Government policy makers and gambling regulators should seek a commercially reasonable and stable Betting Duty rate that provides a balance between channelling gambling demand to the legal betting sector and allowing licensed betting operators to effectively compete with the illegal market.  
Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting & Related Financial Crime, 2023. 30p.