Among the socioenvironmental problems that have been determinant in the causes of climate change, deforestation represents one of the main ones. The environmental harms caused by deforestation include the extinction of flora and fauna species, the loss of soil fertility, and limits on regional sustainability, affecting efforts to mitigate climate change. The social harms include the reduction of communities’ capacities for development and the loss of ecosystem services such as water and soil fertility for subsistence, and phenomena such as illegal logging, when configured as organized crime, threaten the security of local communities. Despite government efforts to regulate this practice at local, regional, and global levels, it is still present in an illegal or uncontrolled manner in many countries. Deforestation is linked to soft law enforcement, the economic precariousness of the places where deforestation takes place (as a subsistence or illegal activity), and highly profitable illegal markets, therefore requiring a multifactorial response. Improving forest law enforcement and environmental conservation also requires strong political commitment across governments, as well as institutional, social (including native and Indigenous communities), economic, and environmental sector collaboration, promoting horizontal governance at all levels.
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The Harms and Crimes of Logging and Deforestation
José Luis Carpio-Domínguez
Article
Health Effects of Incarceration
Justin Berk, Ann Ding, and Josiah Rich
Since 1976, incarcerated individuals in the United States have an established right to healthcare. This has created a national system charged with addressing the unique challenges of healthcare delivery in jails and prisons. As incarcerated populations are often excluded from large research studies, evidence-based practices must often be extrapolated from community data. There is a wide variation in care delivery across institutions nationwide. Challenges in correctional settings include a “dual loyalty” to patients’ health and facility security and the toxic effects of disciplinary practices including solitary confinement, violence, communicable disease control, an aging population, discharge planning for community reentry, and a high prevalence of substance use disorder and mental health disease. Although incarceration may offer a unique opportunity to address chronic health issues of a difficult-to-reach population, the net health effects in the United States seem to be mostly negative. Mass incarceration in the United States has led to significant health consequences at the individual, family, and community levels and has exacerbated health, socioeconomic, and racial disparities. As most incarcerated individuals return to the community, healthcare delivery during incarceration plays a substantial role in the health of communities at all levels.
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Immigration and Crime
Frances Bernat
In the context of crime, victimization, and immigration in the United States, research shows that people are afraid of immigrants because they think immigrants are a threat to their safety and engage in many violent and property crimes. However, quantitative research has consistently shown that being foreign born is negatively associated with crime overall and is not significantly associated with committing either violent or property crime. If an undocumented immigrant is arrested for a criminal offense, it tends to be for a misdemeanor. Researchers suggest that undocumented immigrants may be less likely to engage in serious criminal offending behavior because they seek to earn money and not to draw attention to themselves. Additionally, immigrants who have access to social services are less likely to engage in crime than those who live in communities where such access is not available. Some emerging research has shown that communities with concentrated immigrant populations have less crime because these communities become revitalized. In regard to victimization, foreign-born victims of crime may not report their victimization because of fears that they will experience negative consequences if they contact the police or seek to avoid legal mechanisms to resolve disputes. Recently, concern about immigration and victimization has turned to refugees who are at risk of harm from traffickers, who warehouse them, threaten them, and abuse them physically with impunity. More research is needed on the relationship among immigration, offending, and victimization. The United States and other nations that focus on border security may be misplacing their efforts during global crises that result in forced migrations. Poverty and war, among other social conditions that would encourage a person to leave their homeland in search of a better life, should be addressed by governments when enforcing immigration laws and policy.
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International Criminology: Concept, History, Developments, and Institutions
Gema Varona and José Luis de la Cuesta
In a broad sense, international criminology can be described as the set of activities related to crime prevention and control, coming from the academia, public and private institutions and agencies, to join efforts to debate and publish and make policies, addressed to a global audience beyond a single country. This process of internationalization of criminology, started since its beginnings as a science, at the end of the 19th century through important congresses and meetings developed in Europe, where public officials and academics met. In the 21st century we can talk of a global or globalized criminology around the world, expressed also via websites on the Internet. Together with international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of war and, to a lesser extent, aggression as crime against peace), transnational crimes (corruption, financial crime, terrorism, organized crime, and its different modalities of illegal trafficking, cyber-attacks, and crimes against the environment), as well as crimes of abuse of (political and economic) power (enforced disappearances, summary executions, torture) are the subject matter of international criminology. However, the concept of international criminology is elastic and welcomes any international approach to other topics, traditionally thought domestically; in any case from the international perspective the social-political dimension of criminality appears as a much more relevant issue than the criminal’s personality (and treatment) and protection of victims and the international community become the focus of interest.
Within the internationalization of criminology there are at least two trends that deserve further analysis. The first one is how to balance the cultural differences among all the countries and the myriad of interests involved in the construction of an international criminology. Some criticism is heard in the sense that international criminology is influenced by American or Anglo-Saxon views. From this perspective it is observed a risk of producing academic, legal, and policy criminological transplants without considering the cultural and socioeconomic context of every country and the voices of their inhabitants, very diversed in themselves. The second trend refers to the role of international criminology in relation with the increasingly diffuse borders between police, intelligence agencies, and military forces; crime control and war; or internal and external security, particularly if cyberspace beyond borders is considered. Even though international crimes have always been a core topic, war and political and economic abuse of power across borders, mainly conceived as state and corporate crime, have been quite forgotten in the agendas of both national and international criminology. Today there are different forms of cooperation among countries in conflict situations, (e.g., terrorism, border controls, and the so-called refugee crisis) where the military, intelligence agencies, police forces, and private corporations of different countries work together, providing international criminology new topics for critical reflection and action.
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Law Enforcement and Public Health
Isabelle Bartkowiak-Théron
The law enforcement and public health (LEPH) movement is an emerging area of practice and scholarship that aims to consolidate responses and research addressing a range of complex issues relating to areas of crime and deviance that are deeply rooted in public ill-health. Despite recent growth in political, professional, and academic interest, LEPH collaborations are not new. However, LEPH collaborative problem-solving and the associated delivery of support services to the communityremain difficult to implement, sustain, and evaluate. LEPH is a promising platform from which to view systemic change unfold, and its future appears to be increasingly important given the current calls for the abolishment or defunding of the police, with the accompanying recommendation to re-fund public health services. The opportunities for shared practices and language, as well as the debates around disciplinary remits (particularly how these remits necessarily overlap in practice), focus on how vulnerable people can benefit from the articulation or integration of joined support services in health and criminal justice. Collaborative endeavors in LEPH are not only desirable but also necessary to effectively address the significant overlapping issues presented to police and public health agencies. In a context of global public dissatisfaction with the public sector and the entrenchment of inequality and deprivation, LEPH efforts may offer the next best step to address the ways in which communities have been disadvantaged by inflexibly siloed areas of government.
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Neighborhood Watch
Sylvia Chenery
Neighborhood Watch or Home Watch is internationally regarded as the largest voluntary crime prevention activity in the world. It is typically citizen instigated and police facilitated, with local groups having substantial autonomy in the organization and leadership, some with access to support and materials from overarching national organizations, contingent upon adherence to basic common standards. The local group presents itself as a partnership of people coming together to try to make their community safer, and it is primarily seen as a scheme coordinated between local citizens and their police. The relative autonomy of local groups is reflected in a variety of working collaborations with local or municipal authorities, voluntary agencies, and private business. Neighborhood Watch aims to empower people to protect themselves and their properties and to reduce the fear of crime by means of improved home security, greater vigilance, increased guardianship, and reporting of incidents to the police, and by fostering a community spirit. A further aim of the organization is to improve police and community liaison by developing effective two-way communication processes by which Neighborhood Watch leaders can disseminate up-to-date information among the members. Examples of Neighborhood Watches are now to be found in many parts of the world, and while initially schemes were launched exclusively by the police, as time and the organization have progressed, active citizens are now often initiating the establishment and organization of their own schemes. The closer linkage between police and the Neighborhood Watch organizations is reflected in the fact that the United Kingdom’s Neighborhood Watch national headquarters is located within an operational police station.
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Online Terrorism and Violent Extremism
Ryan Scrivens and Tiana Gaudette
Since the turn of the 21st century, advances in computer technology have revolutionized how people connect, communicate, and interact at a rapid pace. Increasingly, computer technologies and computer-mediated communications have been used by individuals to connect with one another from around the globe. The Internet’s seamless accessibility and user-friendly interface have revolutionized the sharing of information and communications. Terrorists and violent extremists, among many others, have exploited the Internet and its expanding digital landscape, evolving into transnational networks through modern information and communication technologies. Indeed, the Internet has served as a central hub for terrorist groups to connect, recruit, and mobilize as well as distribute propaganda and plan attacks within and outside domestic borders. It should come as no surprise, then, that online terrorism and violent extremism research has grown rapidly in recent years, and so too have the practitioner and policymaker responses to the threat of radicalization to extremist violence.
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Place Managers and Crime Places
John E. Eck
Place management theory—a part of routine activity theory—explains why a relatively few places have a great deal of crime while most places have little or no crime. The explanation is the way place managers carry out their four primary functions: organization of space, regulation of conduct, control of access, and acquisition of resources.
Place managers are those people and organizations that own and operate businesses, homes, hotels, drinking establishments, schools, government offices, places of worship, health centers, and other specific locations. They can even operate mobile places such as busses, trains, ships, and aircraft. Some are large—a multi-story office tower for example—while others are tiny—a bus stop, for example. Place managers are important because they can exercise control over the people who use these locations and in doing so contribute to public order and safety. Consequently, it is important to understand place management, how it can fail, and what one can do to prevent failures.
Place management has implications beyond high-crime sites. When crime places are connected, they can create crime hot spots in an area. The concentration of high crime places can inflate crime in a neighborhood. Moreover, place management can be applied to virtual locations, such as servers, websites, and other network infrastructures.
There is considerable evaluation evidence that place managers can change high crime locations to low crime locations. Research also shows that displacement to other places, though possible, is far from inevitable. Indeed, research shows that improving a high crime place can reduce crime at places nearby places. Although much of this research has studied how police intervene with place managers, non-police regulatory agencies can carry out this public safety function.
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Policing Violent Extremism in Canada and the United States
Sara K. Thompson
The changing and increasingly complex nature of violent extremism has prompted important changes to the ways police in Canada and the United States understand and respond to this violence. A burgeoning research literature examines the reasons underpinning these changes, documents the corresponding expansion of national security apparatuses in both countries and the policy and operational innovations that drove this expansion, and raises important questions about the way forward: Can an operational combination of enforcement and prevention-based programming complement and supplement one another in ways that improve the police response to extremist violence? How have public health frameworks been deployed in the context of police co-led extremism prevention programming? What are the most salient operational challenges for police and partner agencies? Is it possible to ensure that the police response is equitable and effective in responding to the current threat landscape? What role can research and evidence-based practice play to inform and assess the efficacy of current approaches? Such questions mirror the ways traditional, reactive, and enforcement-based approaches to policing violent extremism have been morally interrogated as the primary response to this violence. Lessons learned from an overemphasis on such approaches are imperative to the development of effective, legally and socially responsible approaches for responding to extremist violence in North America.
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Positive Criminology: Theory, Research, and Practice
Natti Ronel and Ety Elisha
Positive criminology is an innovative perspective that underlies existing theories and models emphasizing the positive forces that influence and assist individuals at risk and offenders in their recovery process. The theories and models included in positive criminology (e.g., peacemaking criminology, social acceptance, crime desistance, restorative justice) are not new; its novelty lies in their inclusion in a unique and distinct conceptualization. This has led to a shift in discourse and research in criminology, which goes beyond focusing on risk and criminogenic factors while focusing on the positive factors and strengths that help individuals to rehabilitate and successfully integrate into the community.
Studies and practices developed over the past decade have confirmed and reinforced the assumptions of the positive criminology perspective. Despite its specific limitations, positive criminology provides a promising platform for further developments and innovations in research in theory (e.g., positive victimology, spiritual criminology) and in practice (e.g., restorative justice, problem-solving courts, community policing).
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Predictive Policing in the United States
Fei Yang
Predictive policing, also known as crime forecasting, is a set of high technologies aiding the police in solving past crimes and preventing future ones. With the right deployment of such technologies, law enforcement agencies can combat and control crime more efficiently with time and resources better employed and allocated. The current practices of predictive policing include the integration of various technologies, ranging from predictive crime maps and surveillance cameras to sophisticated computer software and artificial intelligence. Predictive analytics help the police make predictions about where and when future crime is most likely to happen and who will be the perpetrator and who the potential victim. The underpinning logic behind such predictions is the predictability of criminal behavior and crime patterns based on criminological research and theories such as rational choice and deterrence theories, routine activities theory, and broken windows theory. Many jurisdictions in the United States have deployed or have been experimenting with various predictive policing technologies. The most widely adopted applications include CompStat, PredPol, HunchLab, Strategic Subject List (SSL), Beware, Domain Awareness System (DAS), Palantir, and Patternizr. The realization of these predictive policing analytics systems relies heavily on the technological assistance provided by data collection and integration software, facial and vehicle identification and tracking tools, and surveillance technologies that keep tabs on individual activities both in the physical environment and in the digital world. Some examples of these assisting technologies include Automatic License Plate Recognition, Next-Generation Identification System, the Global Positioning System, Automatic Vehicle Location, next-generation police body-worn cameras with facial recognition and tracking functions, aerial cameras and unmanned aircraft systems, DeepFace, Persistent Surveillance Systems, Stingrays/D(i)RT-Box/International Mobile Subscriber Identity Catcher, and SnapTrends (which monitors and analyzes feeds on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Picasa, Flickr, and YouTube). This new trend of using predictive analytics in policing has elicited extensive doubt and criticism since its invention. Whereas scholarly evaluation research shows mixed findings about how effectively predictive policing actually works to help reduce crime, other concerns center around legal and civil rights issues (including privacy protection and the legitimacy of mass surveillance), inequality (stratified surveillance), cost-effectiveness of the technologies, militarization of the police and its implications (e.g., worsened relationship and weakened trust between the police and the public), and epistemological challenges to understanding crime. To make the best use of the technologies and avoid their pitfalls at the same time, policymakers need to consider the hotly debated controversies raised in the evolution of predictive policing.
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Preventing Bullying in School and Work Contexts
Iain Coyne and Marilyn Campbell
The knowledge base on bullying within school and working contexts has matured to the extent that researchers and practitioners are developing a deeper understanding of this complex social relationship problem. Although controversies still exist, evidence to date provides estimates of the prevalence of bullying, risk factors for bullying, antecedents of bullying, and theoretical models explaining bullying behavior and experience. There is little doubt that bullying in all its forms can have severe negative impacts on those involved in the bullying situation. As a result, it is important to establish coherent and evidence-based approaches to preventing bullying behavior in schools and workplaces.
In contrast, the development and evaluation of bullying interventions has not received the same level of support. Both in school and working contexts, there are examples of preventative approaches, but either these are espoused and not directly evaluated, or, where evaluations exist, data is limited in providing definitive answers to the success of an approach. An increasingly dominant voice advocates the creation of policies and laws for preventing workplace bullying. However, the usefulness of policies and laws on their own in reducing bullying is questionable—especially if they are developed with a quick-fix mentality. Trying to prevent such a complex social phenomenon requires an integrated program of actions necessitating significant investment over a prolonged period of time. Stakeholder engagement is paramount to any intervention. Ultimately, schools and workplaces need to try to develop a culture of dignity, fairness, respect, and conflict management which pervades the institution. Challenges remain on how to create such interventions, whether they are effective, and what impact societal values will have on the success of bullying prevention strategies.
Article
Prison Abolition
Kayla M. Martensen and Beth E. Richie
Prison abolition as an American movement, strategy, and theory has existed since the establishment of prison as the primary mode of punishment. In many of its forms, it is an extension of abolition movements dating back to the inception of slavery. The long-term goal of prison abolition is for all people to live in a safe, liberated, and free world. In practice, prison abolition values healing and accountability, suggesting an entirely different way of living and maintaining relationships outside of oppressive regimes, including that of the prison. Prison abolition is concerned with the dismantling of the prison–industrial complex and other oppressive institutions and structures, which restrict true liberation of people who have been marginalized by those in power. These structures include white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and ablest and heteronormative ideologies.
The origins of the prison regime are both global and rooted in history with two fundamental strategies of dominance, the captivity of African-descended peoples, and the conquest of Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples, land and resource. Similarly, the origins of prison abolition begin with the resistance of these systems of dominance. The contemporary prison abolition movement, today, is traced to the Attica Prison Uprising in 1971 when incarcerated people in the New York prison rebelled and demanded change in the living conditions inside prison. The nature of the uprising was different from prior efforts, insofar as the organizers’ demands were about fundamental rights, not merely reforms. Throughout the history of abolition work, there is continuous division between reform and abolition organizers. When the lives, voices, and leadership of the people most impacted by the violence of these oppressive regimes is centered, there is minimal space for discussion of reform. Throughout the abolition movement in America, and other western cultures, the leadership of Black, Indigenous, women, and gender-nonconforming people of color play a pivotal role. By centering the experiences of those most vulnerable, abolitionists understand prison does not need to be reformed and is critical of fashionable reforms and alternatives to prisons which are still rooted in carceral logic.
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Race and Re-Entry After Incarceration
Kayla M. Hoskins and Kaelyn Sanders
Racially minoritized individuals experience distinct challenges to re-entry following incarceration in early 21st-century United States. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have contributed to a system that disproportionately punishes and incarcerates racially minoritized people. For the correctional system, these racial and ethnic disparities translate to issues related to “successful” community re-entry following incarceration. Traditionally, re-entry success has been considered to be avoidance of lawbreaking. However, ideas about re-entry success have developed to include broader concepts of successful reintegration into society. Prominent scholarship investigating criminal justice policies, procedures, and processes has made strides in identifying facilitators and barriers to successful reintegration for formerly incarcerated individuals and has uncovered obstacles uniquely faced by minoritized groups. Specifically, researchers have identified racially disparate correctional issues in areas such as probation and parole experiences, familial ties, resource access, employment and educational opportunities, community disadvantage, civic disenfranchisement, and access to quality health care. Recent scholarship has provided a wealth of considerations to ameliorate these obstacles to re-entry. Withal, extant research indicates a need for reform initiatives targeted to meet the needs of diverse correctional populations, including a shift toward equitable evidence-based policies and interventions and show support for positive re-entry outcomes for minoritized incarcerated and re-entering persons. Assisting re-entering individuals with accessing vital resources (e.g., health care, housing, government assistance), equipping them with necessary skills to live stable and independent lives (e.g., prison-based services, educational assistance, professional training, employment opportunities), promoting healthy connections with their families and communities, and restoring their civic power are all steps that evidence supports to improve re-entry success and reintegration. Continued research on these areas and race is essential to understanding the dimensions of disparate re-entry experiences and creating an even road to successful reintegration after incarceration.
Article
School Climate
Allison Ann Payne and Denise C. Gottfredson
School violence, drug use, bullying, theft, and vandalism are costly and interfere with academic achievement. Beyond the cost of personal injury and property damage and loss, school crime is costly because it interferes with academic achievement and reduces the ability of schools to carry out their educational mission. Fear of victimization influences students’ attendance, such that students are more likely to avoid school activities or places, or even school itself, due to fear of attack or harm. Teachers in disorderly schools also spend a large proportion of their time coping with behavior problems rather than instructing students, resulting in lower levels of student academic engagement, academic performance, and eventually graduation rates. Student misbehavior is also one of the primary sources of teacher turnover in schools.
Responses to school crime have become increasingly formal since the 1990s, with greater recourse to arrest and a turn toward juvenile courts rather than school-based discipline, furthered by zero-tolerance policies and increased hiring of uniformed officers to police the schools. The shift has been from administrative discretion to mandatory penalties and from in-school discipline to increasing use of suspension or arrest. At the same time, there has been a considerable investment in the use of surveillance cameras and metal detectors. There is no evidence to suggest that this tightening of school discipline has reduced school crime.
By contrast, considerable evidence supports the effectiveness of alternative strategies designed to prevent youth crime and delinquency. Several school-based programs targeting student factors such as self-control, social competency, and attachment to school have been demonstrated in rigorous research to be effective for reducing crime and delinquency. In addition, several aspects of the way schools are organized and managed influence crime and disorder.
The term “school climate” encompasses several school characteristics that influence crime and disorder. Evidence supports the importance of the discipline management of a school, including both the fairness and consistency of rules and rule enforcement as well as the clarification and communication of behavioral norms in reducing crime and disorder in schools. The social climate within the school, specifically the existence of a positive and communal climate among all members of the school community, is also important. Research demonstrates that is possible to manipulate these aspects of school climate. Rigorous research shows that efforts to increase clarity and consistency of rule enforcement and to clarify norms for behavior are effective for reducing crime and disorder. More research is needed to test a fully comprehensive intervention aimed at creating a more communal social climate, but preliminary studies suggest positive effects.
Several challenges to creating more positive school climates are discussed, and possible solutions are suggested.
Article
Selling Sex in a Global Context
Aimee Wodda and Meghna Bhat
Commercial sex continues to be an object of debate in the realm of criminological and criminal justice. The regulation of commercial sex in a global context varies due to local law, culture, and custom. Global criminolegal responses to selling sex include criminalization, decriminalization, abolition, neo-abolition, and legalization. In recent decades, global public policymakers have become increasingly concerned with the public health aspects associated with negative outcomes related to the criminalization of the purchase, facilitation, and/or sale of sex. These concerns include violence against those who sell sex, stigma when attempting to access healthcare and social services, increased risk of sexually transmitted infections or diseases (STIs or STDs) including HIV/AIDS, and economic vulnerability that leaves many who sell sex unable to negotiate the use of condoms and at risk of police arrest for carrying condoms. Those most at risk of harm tend to be young people, LGBTQ populations, and people who are racial or ethnic minorities within their communities—these are often intersecting identities. Organizations such as Amnesty International, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, Human Rights Watch, UN AIDS, and the World Health Organization recommend decriminalization of commercial sex in order to reduce stigma and increase positive health outcomes. Scholars have also examined the challenges faced by migrant sex workers and the problematic effects of being labeled a victim of trafficking. Contemporary strategies geared toward reducing harm for those who sell sex tend to focus on rights issues and how they affect the well-being of those who sell sex.
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Situational Crime Prevention
Joshua D. Freilich and Graeme R. Newman
Situational crime prevention (SCP) is a criminological perspective that calls for expanding the crime-reduction role well beyond the justice system. SCP sees criminal law in a more restrictive sense, as only part of the anticrime effort in governance. It calls for minutely analyzing specific crime types (or problems) to uncover the situational factors that facilitate their commission. Intervention techniques are then devised to manipulate the related situational factors. In theory, this approach reduces crime by making it impossible for it to be committed no matter what the offender’s motivation or intent, deterring the offender from committing the offense, or by reducing cues that increase a person’s motivation to commit a crime during specific types of events. SCP has given rise to a retinue of methods that have been found to reduce crime at local and sometimes national or international levels. SCP’s focus is thus different than that of other criminological theories because it seeks to reduce crime opportunities rather than punish or rehabilitate offenders.
SCP emerged more than 40 years ago, and its major concepts include rational choice, specificity, opportunity structure, and its 25 prevention techniques. Contrary to the common critique that SCP is atheoretical, it is actually based upon a well-developed interdisciplinary model drawing from criminology, economics, psychology, and sociology. Importantly, a growing number of empirical studies and scientific evaluations have demonstrated SCP’s effectiveness in reducing crime. Finally, the SCP approach inevitably leads to a shifting of responsibility for crime control away from police and on to those entities, public and private, most competent to reduce it.
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Social Engineering
Kevin F. Steinmetz and Cassandra Cross
This entry reviews the concept of social engineering, the use of deception to circumvent information security measures. While the term social engineering traces its roots back to attempts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to manipulate social groups, the contemporary use of the term is rooted in the mid-20th century and its use among telephone enthusiasts or “phone phreaks.” Despite its associations with contemporary information and computer security, social engineering is fundamentally a social process that parallels the kinds of deceptive strategies and relational practices found in other forms of fraud and deception. As such, it involves the exploitation of human psychology and the rules governing social interactions. Social engineering may have significant impacts on victims beyond financial damages including emotional, psychological, relational, lifestyle, and employment harms. Relying on law enforcement to prevent these crimes is fraught with challenges. To prevent social engineering attacks, organizations may consider adopting a variety of policies and practices including providing education for organizational members on proper security practices, creating clear and strong policies to guide member decision making, ensure onboarding procedures for new employees involve security awareness training and related protocols, creating an organizational culture that values security, employing technologically based fraud prevention measures, and regularly engaging in social engineering penetration testing.
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Specialized Police Units
Janne E. Gaub and Gillian Muñoz
Specialized police units have become a fixture of modern policing. Despite their importance to the professionalization of policing, little is generally known about them, including their formation/creation, implementation, culture, and effectiveness. Specialized units, also known as specialty units, are created to fulfill organizational needs by addressing specific problems. These units may focus on enduring problems to alleviate overburdened patrol units, or more contingent problems that require immediate, decisive action. They often utilize alternative patrol methods, focus on particular crime or offender types, or rely on specialized tactics or skills, or some combination of the above. While some specialized units predate the early 20th century, most were created or expanded during the bureaucratization of policing, particularly in the United States. Organizational theories such as diffusion of innovations, bureaucracy, contingency, and social threat theories can all explain their expansion across policing.
The application of the police subculture within specialized units is clearly present. In particular, specialized units tend to heavily emphasize the solidarity, “us versus them” mentality, competition, and hypermasculinity embedded in the police subculture. The bulk of the scholarly literature on specialized units emphasize paramilitary units (e.g., Special Weapons and Tactics teams), canine (K9) units, and gang units. This is primarily due to their popularity among police departments and association with the coercive role of police. Other specialized tasks that are often considered specialized assignments (but perhaps not a fully formed unit) include mental health crisis response, school security and safety, search and rescue, and investigative units (including Internal Affairs). These units and tasks have received varying levels of scholarly study and are met with mixed results. Finally, some specialized units have received very limited attention in the literature , including traffic enforcement, bike patrol, cybercrime, and crime reduction units.
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Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Crime Prevention Evaluations
Anthony Petrosino, Claire Morgan, and Trevor Fronius
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have become a focal point of evidence-based policy in criminology. Systematic reviews use explicit and transparent processes to identify, retrieve, code, analyze, and report on existing research studies bearing on a question of policy or practice. Meta-analysis can combine the results from the most rigorous evaluations identified in a systematic review to provide policymakers with the best evidence on what works for a variety of interventions relevant to reducing crime and making the justice system fairer and more effective. The steps of a systematic review using meta-analysis include specifying the topic area, developing management procedures, specifying the search strategy, developing eligibility criteria, extracting data from the studies, computing effect sizes, developing an analysis strategy, and interpreting and reporting the results.
In a systematic review using meta-analysis, after identifying and coding eligible studies, the researchers create a measure of effect size for each experimental versus control contrast of interest in the study. Most commonly, reviewers do this by standardizing the difference between scores of the experimental and control groups, placing outcomes that are conceptually similar but measured differently (e.g., such as re-arrest or reconviction) on the same common scale or metric. Though these are different indices, they do measure a program’s effect on some construct (e.g., criminality). These effect sizes are usually averaged across all similar studies to provide a summary of program impact. The effect sizes also represent the dependent variable in the meta-analysis, and more advanced syntheses explore the role of potential moderating variables, such as sample size or other characteristics related to effect size.
When done well and with full integrity, a systematic review using meta-analysis can provide the most comprehensive assessment of the available evaluative literature addressing the research question, as well as the most reliable statement about what works. Drawing from a larger body of research increases statistical power by reducing standard error; individual studies often use small sample sizes, which can result in large margins of error. In addition, conducting meta-analysis can be faster and less resource-intensive than replicating experimental studies. Using meta-analysis instead of relying on an individual program evaluation can help ensure that policy is guided by the totality of evidence, drawing upon a solid basis for generalizing outcomes.
