By Giorgia Cascone, Caterina Paternoster, Michele Riccardi , Viktoriia Poltoratskaya, Bence Tóth: Claudia Baez-Camargo, Jacopo Costa

• Corruption is a complex and multifaced phenomenon, often defined broadly as “the misuse of public office for private gain” [1]. Despite the absence of consensus on its definition [2,3], scholars, practitioners, and policymakers acknowledge corruption as a longstanding issue heavily affecting nations around the world [3]. Its negative impacts are extensive, undermining civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights [4]. • The FALCON Project is a three-year Horizon Europe research project which will develop new data-driven indicators and tools to strengthen the global fight against corruption by following an evidence-based, multiactor and interdisciplinary approach. • Specifically, FALCON covers four corruption domains: Corruption and fraud in public procurement; Circumvention of sanctions by "kleptocrats" and oligarchs; Border corruption; Other high-level corruption cases • This Policy Brief summarizes the main results of the analysis carried out on these four corruption domains under Work Package 2 of the FALCON Project. The document is structured as follows

Policy Brief of Project FALCON.

Milan: Transcrime – Joint Research Centre on Innovation and Crime, 2025. 22p.

By Andy Aydın-Aitchison

The paper reflects on the value of linking criminological research on atrocity with that on serious economic crime. The two areas of criminological research are outlined briefly, before common challenges around complexity and interdependence are set out. An example of a criminal career encompassing both atrocity and serious economic criminality is put forward to support claims that atrocity and economic crime can usefully be studied together. Three further examples of research are discussed to show the possible merits of bringing together two criminological strands. Ultimately, studying the two forms of criminality together would respect the lived experience of victims, who see firsthand how atrocity and serious economic crime go hand in hand.

International Criminal Law Review (2023) 1–17

By William P. McClanahan, Daniel S. Nagin, Marco Otte, Peter Wozniak, Jean-Louis van Gelder

A central tenet of the criminal decision-making literature is that perceptions of the environment shape decisions. Yet the underlying mechanisms linking environmental features to perception remain mostly untested. Those that have been tested have relied on methods that are either correlational or have limited generalizability. We aimed to fill this gap by harnessing the power of virtual reality. Using burglary as a case study, incarcerated residential burglars with varying degrees of proficiency (N = 160) explored a virtual neighborhood with houses that differed in features related to the risks and rewards of burglary. In support of our preregistered hypotheses, offenders adjust their perceptions in response to environmental features related to risks and rewards. Moreover, proficiency modifies these perceptions, with more proficient offenders believing they are less likely to get caught and seen and, as a result, more likely to break into a house. We support our statistical findings with rich data from qualitative interviews.

Criminology, Volume 63, Issue 1, February 2025, Pages 155-182

By Costas Meghir Marten Palme Marieke Schnabel

We study the intergenerational effect of education policy on crime. We use Swedish administrative data that links outcomes across generations with crime records and we show that the comprehensive school reform, gradually implemented between 1949 and 1962, reduced conviction rates both for the generation directly affected by the reform and for their sons. The reduction in conviction rates occurred across many types of crime. Key mediators for this reduction in the child generation are an increase in education and a decline in crime amongst their fathers.

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 2356, New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2023. 40p.

By Maeve E. Wallace; Jaquelyn L. Jahn

IMPORTANCE Despite growing national concern about high and increasing rates of pregnancyassociated mortality due to homicide, suicide, and drug overdose, state-level incidence has previously not been available. OBJECTIVE To identify cases of pregnancy-associated homicide, suicide, drug overdose, and deaths involving firearms in the US from calendar year 2018 to 2022 and estimate 5-year proportionate mortality and mortality ratios per 100 000 live births by state and cause of death. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This cross-sectional study is a population-based analysis of the 2018-2022 restricted-use mortality files provided by the National Center for Health Statistics. These data include all deaths occurring in the US, with geographic identifiers for state of residence. All records in which the decedent was female aged 10 to 44 years and pregnant at the time of death or up to 1 year earlier were included in the analysis. Data were analyzed from July 1 to December 1, 2024. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision codes for underlying cause of death were used to identify cases of homicide, suicide, drug overdose, and deaths involving firearms occurring in each state from 2018 to 2022. Proportionate mortality was estimated as the count of cases divided by the total count of deaths of pregnant and postpartum women in each state. Cause-specific mortality ratios were estimated as the count of cases divided by the total count of live births in each state from 2018 to 2022. RESULTS Nationally, there were 10 715 deaths of people who were pregnant or within 1 year post partum from 2018 to 2022, including 837 homicides, 579 suicides, 2083 drug overdoses, and 851 that involved firearms. Proportionate mortality and mortality ratios for homicide, suicide, and drug overdose varied across the US. Of states with more than 9 cases, pregnancy-associated homicide mortality was highest in Mississippi (12.86 per 100 000 live births), pregnancy-associated suicide mortality was highest in Montana (21.55 deaths per 100 000 live births), and pregnancy-associated drug overdose was highest in Delaware (36.03 deaths per 100 000 live births). Firearms accounted for as many as 15.56% of pregnancy-associated deaths in Colorado, and pregnancy-associated firearm mortality was highest in Mississippi (13.42 deaths per 100 000 live births). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The information in this study may provide relevant guidance for state and local intervention strategies to advance the health, safety, and well-being of women during pregnancy and beyond.

JAMA Network Open. 2025;8(2):e2459342. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.59342 (R

By Robynn S Cox, Jamein P. Cunningham

We estimate the effectiveness of the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program, a grant program authorized under the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act to combat illicit drug abuse and to improve the criminal justice system, on racial bias in policing. Funds for the Byrne Grant program could be used for a variety of purposes to combat drug crimes, as well as violent and other drug related crimes. The event-study analysis suggests that implementation of this grant resulted in an increase in police hiring and an increase in arrests for drug trafficking. Post-treatment effect implies a 107 percent increase in white arrests for drug sales compared to a 44 percent increase for blacks 6 years after the first grant is received. However, due to historical racial differences in drug arrests, the substantial increase in white drug arrest still results in large racial disparities in drug arrests. This is supported by weighted least squares regression estimates that show, for every $100 increase in Byrne Grant funding, arrests for drug trafficking increased by roughly 22 per 100,000 white residents and by 101 arrests per 100,000 black residents. The results provide strong evidence that federal involvement in narcotic control and trafficking lead to an increase in drug arrests; disproportionally affecting blacks

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Volume 40, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 191-224

By Thomas Grisaffi, Linda Farthing, Kathryn Ledebur, Maritza Paredes, Alvaro Pastor

Between 2006-2019, Bolivia emerged as a world leader in formulating a participatory, non-violent model to gradually limit coca production in a safe and sustainable manner while simultaneously offering farmers realistic economic alternatives to coca. Our study finds that not only has this model reduced violence, but it has effectively expanded social and civil rights in hitherto marginal regions. In contrast, Peru has continued to conceptualize ‘drugs’ as a crime and security issue. This has led to U.S.-financed forced crop eradication, putting the burden onto impoverished farmers, generating violence and instability. At the request of farmers, the Peruvian government has made a tentative move towards implementing one aspect of Bolivia’s community control in Peru. Could it work? We address this question by focusing on participatory development with a special emphasis on the role of local organizations and the relationship between growers and the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, focus group discussions and secondary research, we find that for community control to have any chance of success in Peru, grassroots organizations must be strengthened and grower trust in the state created. The study also demonstrates that successful participatory development in drug crop regions is contingent on land titling and robust state investment, which strengthens farmer resolve to participate so as to avoid a return to the repression of the past.

World Development, 2021, 14p.

By Sjoukje van Deuren

Although Dutch Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMCGs) have been around since the late nineteen seventies, it was not until the turn of the century that Dutch OMCGs increasingly started to attract attention from both the authorities and the general public. In 1996, a report on Dutch organized crime provided a starting point for the government’s view that OMCGs in general and the Hells Angels in particular, are hotbeds for serious and organized crime that need to be addressed. In the report, members of the Amsterdam Hells Angels were accused of being involved in serious and organized crime, such as the trade, import, and transit of synthetic drugs (Bovenkerk & Fijnaut, 1996). In 2012, the presumption that members of at least some OMCGs were involved in organized crime, a growing fear of inter-club feuds, and the feeling that Dutch OMCGs were exhibiting themselves as untouchable and above the law, spurred the minister of Security and Justice to announce a multi-pronged, whole-of-government approach (Van Ruitenburg, 2020). This integrated approach was aimed at combating criminal OMCGs via all legal options available, including criminal, civil, and administrative means. Initially all OMCGs of the former Dutch Council of Eight – a consultative body established in 1996 by the Hells Angels and seven other motorcycle clubs to avoid turmoil and inter-club rivalry – were subjected to the integrated approach. In the context of the integrated approach, various actors, such as the police, local governments, and tax authorities closely work together to raise barriers against the OMCG subculture.1 The approach aims to hinder the criminal opportunities of OMCG members, reduce the popularity of the OMCG subculture, and target the untouchable image of OMCGs by addressing the OMCGs on the individual and on the club level. On the individual level, focal points of the approach are prioritizing the criminal prosecution of individual OMCG members, and reducing the number of OMCG members working for the private security sector or the government. Criminal prosecution is specifically targeted at OMCG board members in an effort to rid the clubs of their management. On the club level, club houses are closed down and OMCG-related events are prohibited. Clubhouses are believed to be important locations for the planning and execution of (organized) crime, while OMCGrelated events provide opportunity for the escalation of conflict. More recently, the Dutch Public Prosecution Office successfully filed petitions to the civil court to ban those Dutch OMCGs deemed to be most heavily involved in crime. Overall, the integrated approach is much more focused on the structural aspects of OMCGs as collectives, rather than on specific forms of (organized) crime committed by individual members. Importantly, when the integrated approach was implemented in 2012, there was scant knowledge on the crimes of the various Dutch OMCGs, and on whether and in which (continued)

Amsterdam: Free University of Amsterdam, 2023. 175p.

By Ashley Brown, Shane D. Johnson & Nilufer Tuptuk

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) integrate advanced communication and autonomous driving technologies, enabling them to operate independently or with minimal human intervention. Despite the anticipated benefits for transportation, CAVs could be vulnerable to a wide variety of crimes unless security and crime prevention measures are proactively integrated into the technologies enabling their operation. To understand the potential crime threats, an extensive scoping review was conducted, covering incidents reported in the news and media, along with academic articles from crime and cybersecurity research. A total of 70 news articles related to crime incidents were identified, along with 12 academic articles on crimes. In addition, the findings from 35 survey papers addressing security attacks against CAVs, along with 29 additional papers covering security attacks not addressed in those surveys were synthesised. A total of 22 crime threats were identified. A 2-day workshop with experts was then held to present the findings from the review, conduct a crime scenario development exercise to identify any crime threats that were not identified in the review, and to assess the identified crimes. During the workshop, experts generated 6 new crime scenarios, bringing the total to 28 crime threats. To identify and prioritise high-risk crimes for future work, the experts were then asked to rate the threats based on their anticipated harm, achievability, frequency, and defeat-ability. The crime threats with the highest risk ratings included illegal transportation, vehicle theft, vehicle part theft, ransom for financial gain, and vandalism. The implications of our findings for research, policy and practice are discussed. Crime Science, 2025. https://crimesciencejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40163-025-00245-x

Crime Science, 14, Article number: 2 (2025), 39p.

By Gustavo J. Bobonis and Anke Kessler

To what extent can anti-corruption measures serve to limit patronage and corrupt networks effectively and sustainably in clientelist societies with a prevailing norm of corruption? We develop a political agency model in which office holders are motivated to reduce rent seeking behavior through re-election incentives operating via elections and audits (formal institutions), but also through reputational or self-image concerns that are influenced by the prevailing norm on corruption in their peer group (informal institutions). We show that, while the formal institutions of audits and elections have the desired direct effect of reducing corruption, they also affect informal rules of conduct, which can have unintended effects. In particular, in clientelist societies with high levels of corruption, the social concerns work in opposition to formal incentives provided by anti-corruption efforts. Applying the theory to data from Puerto Rico’s anti-corruption municipal audits program, we find evidence consistent with the idea that anticorruption measures are less effective due to social spillovers.

CESifo Working Paper No. 11715, Munich: Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH, 2025.

By Triana McNeil

 Criminal organizations generate money from illicit activities such as drug and human trafficking and launder the proceeds. Federal agencies investigate illicit activity and have developed several strategies and efforts to combat these crimes. GAO was asked to review efforts to counter illicit finance activities. This report addresses, among other things, (1) selected agencies’ roles and responsibilities in investigating and prosecuting illicit finance activities and (2) the progress made with selected strategies and efforts to counter illicit finance activities. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed agency documents and data, including those related to eight selected federal strategies and efforts on countering illicit finance activities. GAO compared four of these strategies and efforts—which represent long range, multi agency undertakings—to selected key practices for evidencebased policymaking and for interagency collaboration. What GAO Recommends GAO is making four recommendations, including that Treasury collect and assess performance information on implementing the Illicit Finance Strategy, and that the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development establish goals and assess progress for implementing the Initiative. Treasury disagreed with the recommendation, State agreed with the intent of the recommendation but believes it already addressed it, and USAID agreed.

The National Security Council did not provide comments. 2025. 94p.

By Joseph R Friedman, Daniela Abramovitz, Britt Skaathun, Gudelia Rangel, Alicia Harvey-Vera, Carlos F Vera, Irina Artamonova, Sheryl Muñoz, Natasha K Martin, William H Eger ...

Background

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) increases overdose mortality, but its role in infectious disease transmission is unknown. We examined whether IMF use predicts hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) incidence among a cohort of people who inject drugs (PWID) in San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico.

Methods

PWID were recruited during 2020–2022, undergoing semi-annual interviewer-administered surveys and HIV and HCV serological rapid tests through 2024. Cox regression was conducted to examine predictors of seroconversion considering self-reported IMF use as a 6-month lagged, time-dependent covariate.

Results

Of 398 PWID at baseline, 67% resided in San Diego, 70% were male, median age was 43 years, 42% reported receptive needle sharing, and 25% reported using IMF. HCV incidence was 14.26 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval [CI]: 11.49–17.02), and HIV incidence was 1.29 (95% CI: .49–2.10). IMF was associated with HCV seroconversion, with a univariable hazard ratio (HR) of 1.64 (95% CI: 1.09–2.40), and multivariable HR of 1.57 (95% CI: 1.03–2.40). The direction of the relationship with HIV was similar, albeit not significant (HR 2.39; 95% CI: .66–8.64).

Conclusions

We document a novel association between IMF and HCV seroconversion among PWID in Tijuana–San Diego. Few HIV seroconversions (n = 10) precluded our ability to assess if a similar relationship held for HIV. IMF's short half-life may destabilize PWID—increasing the need for repeat dosing and sharing smoking materials and syringes. New preventive care approaches may reduce HCV transmission in the fentanyl era.

Clinical Infectious Diseases, cia e372, 2024.

By Vasiliki Georgoulas-Sherry & Hanna Hernandez

Data is needed to understand and assess the demographic differences—and at times, disparities and disproportionalities—in how the criminal justice system serves our communities and administers justice. Understanding these disparities and disproportionality in the criminal justice system is crucial for addressing systemic inequities. Disparities and disproportionalities within the criminal justice system are present in all stages of the criminal justice system, from arrest to incarceration (Brame et al., 2014; Kim & Kiesel, 2018; Kovera, 2019; Monk, 2019). This topic continues to draw significant attention from a variety of resources such as local, state, and federal government agencies, advocacy groups, policymakers and lawmakers, researchers and scholars, and the community. Evaluating these disparities and disproportionality is critical for addressing systemic inequalities and promoting fairness in the administration of justice. To respond to these impacts, the Criminal Justice Research & Statistics Center. the Washington Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) applied for and received the 2023 State Justice Statistics (SJS) grant from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to assess this work. Through the use of publicly available data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to evaluate sex and racial disparities and disproportionalities, this report, which is part of a series of NIBRS reports, will endeavor to better understand more about the different demographic groups that are most impacted, and how these trends vary by time. Furthermore, this report will assess the demographic differences in the presence of injury, the presence of bias motivation, the use of weapons and/ or force, and the presence of familiarity in victimization in NIBRS crimes against property (i.e., criminal acts that destroy or deprive another's property against the owner's will - generally considered less serious than crimes against persons, but they can still be felonies).

Olympia: Washington State Statistical Analysis Center, 2024. 74p.

By Jonathan Lusthaus

Cybercrime is not a solely technical subject but one that involves human offenders who are susceptible to social scientific study. Yet, despite calls for cybercrime research to be mainstreamed, the topic remains a niche area within legal studies and the social sciences. Drawing on the most significant findings over recent years, this review aims to make the subject more accessible to a wide range of scholars by softening some of the perceived boundaries between conceptions of cybercrime and conventional crime. It examines these key themes in the literature: definitions and categories of cybercrime, cybercrime marketplaces, the governance of cybercrime, the importance of “place” within the world of cybercrime, cybercriminal networks, a discussion of what is new or old about cybercrime, and how we should define the concept going forward. The empirical literature on these themes suggests a simple definition is most appropriate: Cybercrime is crime that uses digital technology in a significant way.

Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Vol. 20 (2024), pp. 369–385

By Shawn Davies, Garoun Engström, Therése Pettersson, and Magnus Öberg

This article examines trends in organized violence based on new data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). In 2023, fatalities from organized violence decreased for the first time since the rapid increase observed in 2020, dropping from 310,000 in 2022 to 154,000 in 2023. Despite this decline, these figures represent some of the highest fatality rates recorded since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, surpassed only by those of 2022 and 2021. The decrease was primarily attributed to the end of the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which accounted for about 60% of battle-related deaths in both 2022 and 2021. Despite this positive development, the number of active state-based armed conflicts increased by three in 2023, reaching the highest level ever recorded by the UCDP, totaling 59. Non- state conflicts and one-sided violence decreased in 2023 when compared to 2022, evident in both the reduction of the active conflicts/actors and the decrease in fatalities attributed to these forms of violence. However, despite this overall decrease, fatalities resulting from non-state conflicts remained at historically high levels in 2023. Analysis of non-state conflict data spanning the past decade reveals that it comprises the ten most violent years on record. Organized crime groups have predominantly fueled this escalation. Unlike rebel groups, organized crime groups typically lack political goals and are primarily motivated by economic gain. Conflicts between these groups tend to intensify around drug smuggling routes and in urban areas, driven by shifts in alliances and leadership dynamics among the actors.

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 61(4), 2024, 673­ –693 pages

By Anita Lavorgna, and Anna Sergi

This paper, based on discourse analysis of policy documents, departs from a critique of the juxtaposition of the terms “serious” and “organised” in policies against organised crime in the UK. The conceptualisation of organised crime as national security threat supports our hypothesis that a similar critique can be applied to the emerging narrative of cyber-organised crime in the country. We argue that, whereby organised crime has become essentially “serious” as consequence of its characterisation as a national security threat, cyber crime is becoming “organised” in the policy narrative because of its seriousness. The seriousness and organisation of cyber crime justifies its inclusion within the national security agenda, thus accessing the procedural benefits of criminal intelligence assigned to national security threats. The implications associated to the evolution of such narratives in policy-making need to be assessed while policies are still developing.

International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 2016, 18p.

By Daniel Birks, Elizabeth R. Groff, and Nick Malleson

An agent-based model is a form of complex systems model that is capable of simulating how the micro-level behavior of individual system entities contributes to macro-level system outcomes. Researchers draw on theory and evidence to identify the key elements of a given system and specify behaviors of agents that simulate the individual entities of that system—be they cells, animals, or people. The model is then used to run simulations in which agents interact with one another and the resulting outcomes are observed. These models enable researchers to explore proposed causal explanations of real-world outcomes, experiment with the impacts that potential interventions might have on system behavior, or generate counterfactual scenarios against which real-world events can be compared. In this review, we discuss the application of agent-based modeling within the field of criminology as well as key challenges and future directions for research.

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 8:75-95 January 2025)

By Jack Katz and Nahuel Roldán

Criminology is haunted by state-structured biases. We discuss five. (a) With the spatial boundaries and the binary deontology they use to count crime, governments draw researchers into ecological fog and sometimes fallacy. (b) All legal systems encourage criminologists to promote untenable implications of socially stratified criminality. (c) To degrees that vary by time and place, the scope of criminological research is compromised by methodological nationalism. (d) State agencies use chronologies that repeatedly draw researchers away from examining the nonlinear temporalities that shape variations in criminal behavior. (e) State agencies produce data that facilitate explaining the why of crime, but scientific naturalism would first work out what is to be explained. We recommend a criminology that begins by describing causal contingencies in social life independent of governments’ labeling of crime.

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 8:53-73 , January 2025

By John Hagan

My interest in criminology grew as the Vietnam War escalated. I applied to two Canadian graduate schools and flipped a coin. The coin recommended the University of Toronto, but I chose the University of Alberta, which had a stronger criminology program. I wrote a dissertation about criminal sentencing, which led to an Assistant Professorship at the University of Toronto. Dean Robert Pritchard of Toronto’s Law School encouraged my work and later successfully nominated me for a Distinguished University Professorship. My interests continued to grow in international criminal law. A MacArthur Distinguished Professorship at Chicago’s Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation facilitated my research at the Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. I followed this by studying the crime of genocide in Sudan and later the trial of Chicago’s Detective Jon Burge. Burge oversaw the torture of more than 100 Black men on Chicago’s South Side. US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted Burge when Illinois prosecutors would not. Despite many good things about Chicago, the periodic corruption of the government and police was not among them.

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 8:1-23 . January 2025

By Reanna Sanchez

The goal of this process evaluation was to determine how closely the RRC was following evidence-based practices for reentry and to determine how successful the RRC has been transitioning individuals from the jail to the community. To evaluate the effectiveness of the RRC, we (1) conducted a survey of county staff involved in the reentry process (n = 25) to better understand how staff perceive the reentry planning process and the RRC, (2) conducted observations of the intake and screening process at the MDC, and (3) reviewed client records for all inmates who passed through the RRC between 2018 and 2022. We found that there were challenges associated with how the RRC screened, assessed, and targeted individuals for intervention related to a lack of standardization across process components. Surveys collected from staff members provided insight into challenges related to reentry, such as the need for a single case plan to follow the individual through jail and into the community. Finally, analysis of the client-level data illustrated the services and needs of clients. While many individuals (n = 9,985) completed risk needs assessments (RNAs), the number of individuals that completed transition plans (TPs) is far less (n = 2,785). Due to the nature of the different challenges of the current process in place, determining the impact of the RRC on recidivism reduction remains complicated.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Center for Applied Research & Analysis, 2023. 40p.