By Juliana Gómez-Quintero, Shane D. Johnson, Hervé Borrion, and Samantha Lundrigan

The metaverse is an emerging convergence of technologies (e.g., virtual reality and blockchains) that enables users to experience mixed/extended realities for various legitimate purposes (e.g., gaming, tourism, manufacturing and education). Unfortunately, the crime and security implications of emerging technologies are often overlooked. To anticipate crimes that the metaverse might facilitate, we report the findings of a nominal group technique (NGT) study, which involved a state-of-the-art scoping review of the existing literature and elicitation exercises with two groups of experts (one a diverse group from the UK and Europe, the other representing international law enforcement) with a wide range of expertise. A total of 30 crime threats were identified in the literature or by participants. The elicitation exercises also explored how harmful, frequent, achievable and defeatable participants anticipated that the crimes identified would be. Ratings for these aspects were largely consistent across the two samples, with crimes of a sexual nature (e.g., child sexual abuse material), and crimes against the person (e.g., hate crime) being rated as presenting the highest future risks (i.e. being high harm and high frequency) and being the most difficult to address. The findings illuminate understanding of the most (and least) harmful and likely crime threats the metaverse could facilitate and consequently help stakeholders to prioritise which offences to focus on. In discussing how the crime threats might be addressed, we consider roles and responsibilities and how theory about the management of physical places might inform crime prevention in the metaverse(s).

Futures, Volume 157, March 2024, 103338

By United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute

Historical Context: The document outlines the evolution of Sovietcriminology through three stages: the 1920s, the 1960s "thaw," and the period of perestroika and glasnost in the 1980s.

Crime Trends: There was a significant increase in crime rates,particularly serious crimes, from the 1970s to the 1980s. The Document highlights issues like recidivism, professionalization of economic crime, and the rise in crimes among students and rural inhabitants.

Criminal Legislation: The document discusses the need for reforms inSoviet criminal law, emphasizing the importance of clear and logical legal language to reduce errors in the justice system.

Social and Psychological Factors: It explores the socio-psychological mechanisms behind criminal behavior, including the influence of social environment, personal traits, and the process of socialization.

UNICRI, 1990, 179 pages

May Contain Markup

By Tony Parker

Study of Recidivism: The book explores the life of 'Charlie Smith,' habitual criminal, to understand the broader issue of recidivism and the challenges faced by repeat offenders.

Humanizing Criminals: It emphasizes treating criminals as human beings with complex backgrounds and not just as statistics or typical representatives of criminal behavior.

Systemic Failures: The narrative highlights the systemic failures in addressing the root causes of criminal behavior and the ineffectiveness of punishment alone.

Personal Struggles: Charlie's story reveals his personal struggles, lack of support, and the societal challenges that contribute to his repeated offenses.

Faber & Faber, Jul 16, 2013, 176 pages

By W. H. Hammond & Edna Chayen

Study Focus: The document examines persistent offenders liable to preventive detention in 1956, analyzing their criminal characteristics and the effectiveness of preventive detention.

Preventive Detention: It highlights the ineffectiveness of preventive detention in reducing crime among persistent offenders, noting that only a small proportion are diverted from crime.

Comparison: The study compares these offenders with those from a previous study byProfessor Norval Morris, finding similar characteristics over a 20-year period.

Recommendations: Suggestions are made for improving the selection and treatment of offenders to better protect society and rehabilitate criminals.

London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963, 237 pages

May Contain Markup

By Donald Powell Wilson

Psychologist's Experience: The author, a psychologist, spent three years at Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary, significantly changing his perspective and approach to his profession.

Research Focus: The book is a personal account of the author's research on drug addiction and criminality, highlighting the human stories of his six convict assistants.

Prison Environment: The narrative provides a vivid description of the penitentiary's environment, including the strict security measures and the daily routines of the inmates.

Challenges and Adaptation: The author faced numerous challenges,including gaining the trust of the inmates and navigating the prison complex social dynamics.

Pocket Books, 1953, 369 pages

May Contain Markup

Edited by Peter Becker & Richard F. Wetzell

Historical Scope: The book covers the history of criminology from the late 18th to mid-20th centuries across various countries, includingWestern Europe, the United States, Argentina, Australia, andJapan.

Criminological Discourse: It examines criminology as a discourse and practice, involving police, courts, parliamentary debates, media reports,and writings of statisticians, jurists, and medical doctors..

Cesare Lombroso's Influence: The book provides a comparative study of the worldwide reception of Lombroso's criminal-anthropological ideas and their impact on criminological discourse.

Interdisciplinary Approach: The chapters highlight the relationship between criminological discourse and politics, society, and culture,integrating perspectives from history, sociology, and medical science.

Cambridge University Press, 2006, 492 pages

By Lloyd W. Klemke

Sociological Perspective: The book delves into the sociological aspectsof shoplifting, exploring its occurrence, techniques, and the profiles ofshoplifters.

Research and Theories: It examines various research studies andtheoretical frameworks related to shoplifting, including typologies andbehavioral theories.

Security and Prevention: The text discusses methods for detecting,apprehending, and preventing shoplifting, as well asthe role of storesecurity personnel

Legal and Social Responses: It addresses the legal system's response to shoplifting and the societal implications of this deviant behavior.

The document provides a comprehensive analysis of shoplifting from multiple angles within the field of criminology and sociology

Bloomsbury Academic, 1992, 159 pages

ByThomas D. Akoensi, Justice Tankebe

Using an experimental vignette design, the study inves-tigates the effects of criminal records on the hiring deci-sions of a convenience sample of 221 human resource(HR) managers in Ghana. The HR managers were ran-domly assigned to read one of four vignettes depicting job seekers of different genders and criminal records:male with and without criminal record, female with and without criminal record. The evidence shows that a criminal record reduces employment opportunities for female offenders but not for their male counter-parts. Additionally, HR managers are willing to offer interviews to job applicants, irrespective of their crim-inal records, if they expect other managers to hire ex-convicts. The implications of these findings are dis-cussed.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, online first, May 2024

By Ben Grunwald and Jeffrey Fagan

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012. Our results suggest that Wardlow may have been wrongly decided. Specifically, we find evidence that officers often assess whether areas are high crime using a very broad geographic lens; that they call almost every block in the city high crime; that their assessments of whether an area is high crime are nearly uncorrelated with actual crime rates; that the suspect’s race predicts whether an officer calls an area high crime as well as the actual crime rate; that the racial composition of the area and the identity of the officer are stronger predictors of whether an officer calls an area high crime than the crime rate itself; and that stops are less or as likely to result in the detection of contraband when an officer invokes high-crime area as a basis of a stop. We conclude with several policy proposals for courts, police departments, and scholars to help address these problems in the doctrine.

California Law Review 345-404 (2019

By Robert D. Crutchfield 

Are the unemployed more likely to commit crimes? Does having a job make one less likely to commit a crime? Criminologists have found that individuals who are marginalized from the labor market are more likely to commit crimes, and communities with more members who are marginal to the labor market have higher rates of crime. Yet, as Robert Crutchfield explains, contrary to popular expectations, unemployment has been found to be an inconsistent predictor of either individual criminality or collective crime rates. In Get a Job, Crutchfield offers a carefully nuanced understanding of the links among work, unemployment, and crime.

Crutchfield explains how people’s positioning in the labor market affects their participation in all kinds of crimes, from violent acts to profit-motivated offenses such as theft and drug trafficking. Crutchfield also draws on his first-hand knowledge of growing up in a poor, black neighborhood in Pittsburgh and later working on the streets as a parole officer, enabling him to develop a more complete understanding of how work and crime are related and both contribute to, and are a result of, social inequalities and disadvantage. Well-researched and informative, Get a Job tells a powerful story of one of the most troubling side effects of economic disparities in America.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2014. 303p.

By Ralph B. Taylor

For close to a century, the field of community criminology has examined the causes and consequences of community crime and delinquency rates. Nevertheless, there is still a lot we do not know about the dynamics behind these connections. In this book, Ralph Taylor argues that obstacles to deepening our understanding of community/crime links arise in part because most scholars have overlooked four fundamental concerns: how conceptual frames depend on the geographic units and/or temporal units used; how to establish the meaning of theoretically central ecological empirical indicators; and how to think about the causes and consequences of non-random selection dynamics. The volume organizes these four conceptual challenges using a common meta-analytic framework. The framework pinpoints critical features of and gaps in current theories about communities and crime, connects these concerns to current debates in both criminology and the philosophy of social science, and sketches the types of theory testing needed in the future if we are to grow our understanding of the causes and consequences of community crime rates. Taylor explains that a common meta-theoretical frame provides a grammar for thinking critically about current theories and simultaneously allows presenting these four topics and their connections in a unified manner. The volume provides an orientation to current and past scholarship in this area by describing three distinct but related community crime sequences involving delinquents, adult offenders, and victims. These sequences highlight community justice dynamics thereby raising questions about frequently used crime indicators in this area of research. A groundbreaking work melding past scholarly practices in criminology with the field’s current needs, Community Criminology is an essential work for criminologists.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2015. 336p.

By Volkan Topalli, Timothy Dickinson, and Scott Jacques

Active offender research relies on the collection of data from noninstitutionalized criminals and has made significant contributions to our understanding of the etiology of serious crime. This review covers its history as well as its methodological, scientific, and ethical pitfalls and advantages. Because study subjects are currently and freely engaging in crime at the time of data collection, their memories, attitudes, and feelings about their criminality and specific criminal events are rich, detailed, and accurate. Contemporary approaches to active offender research employ systematized formats for data collection and analysis that improve the validity of findings and help illuminate the foreground of crime. Although active offender research has traditionally relied on qualitative techniques, we outline the potential for it to make contributions via mixed methods, experiments, and emerging computational and technological approaches, such as virtual reality simulation studies and agent-based modeling.  

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:189–215