By Sarah Bosman

Fencing constitutes knowingly and willingly dealing in stolen goods, such as smartphones, vehicles or jewellery. It includes a large variety of activities, not only buying, trading and selling stolen goods, but also safely transporting and storing these goods. It is often referred to as a ‘victimless crime’. Typically, the selling and purchasing of stolen goods is a voluntary exchange in which both the seller and customer are helped instead of harmed. Moreover, many of the customers do not even realise they are buying stolen goods. For this reason, no one will report it, meaning that little is known about the prevalence of this phenomenon. Fencing inherently cannot exist without a different prior offence (e.g. burglary or theft) occurring. According to criminal law, this constitutes two separate crimes, as first there is a theft, followed by selling or trading these stolen goods. Yet, from the offender’s perspective, these actions fall under the same objective, which is obtaining money. On one hand, the fences make an easy profit, and on the other, the thieves can acquire money to buy something else. In order to prevent fencing, it is necessary to implement a holistic approach that includes all the relevant partners and targets every aspect of the phenomenon. For this reason, four separate focus areas have been identified that together make up the general phenomenon (see figure 1). These focus areas are: (1) preventing (valuable) goods from being stolen, (2) preventing fences and their customers from selling as well as buying stolen goods, (3) tackling stolen goods markets in general, and (4) the creation of local and (inter)national partnerships. Many of the initiatives contained in this paper are already being implemented in practice and have great potential. The aim of these initiatives is to make it more challenging to deal in stolen goods and consequently also to discourage theft to begin with.

Brussels: European Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN) 2022. 24p.