This session introduces you to two forensic methods: crime script analysis and routine activities theory and assesses how useful they are in understanding criminal activity. We take up the theme of rationality in crime and the benefits and limits of understanding crime as rational and to some extent normal and expected. The session invites you to create your own crime script from existing data.
(All links will open in a new window)
Review the process of creating a crime script used in:
Review the data posted . In class we will assemble these into a script for counterfeit currency operators.
6 – Digital organised crime and platform criminality
Introduction – From cybercrime to digital crime
This week introduces the context of cybercrime and global illicit markets. We discuss key concepts in the field, such as what cybercrime is and the history of cybercrime. We ask whether digital crime is a better frame for capturing what we are interested in. We look at some key areas of crime and crime control, from the darknet to white collar fraud.
This week…
For this session I would like us to think critically about technology and risk in relation to crime, how that is understood societally through a Europol report, and the ways in which cybercrime groups are evolving using research from Lusthaus and Varese.
To start, read:
To start, read: Europol (2021) Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment The Hague.
and also
Lusthaus J and Varese F (2018) Offline and Local: The Hidden Face of Cybercrime. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.
Focus around these questions:
Drawing on Europol and your own experience, what are the greatest risks from cybercrime? What qualities does cybercrime have that matter?
What kind of imagery is Europol using to represent a) crime and b) criminals?
What are Europol’s priorites, in terms of what crimes does it regard with the greatest seriousness?
What does Europol have to say about people’s motives for being involved, and why they end up being victims?
What do they understand by ‘technology’? What kind of technologies would be used by crime groups?
Using the Lusthaus and Varese article in what senses is cybercrime ‘offline’ and ‘local’?
In what ways do their findings contrast with the Europol document?
7 – Trust, social ties and market rationality
Introduction
We examine how some kinds of criminal activity are legitimised and normalised, and how trust between people involved in criminal activity is made and broken. We ask:
What is the relationship between trust and economic instruments such as credit and exchange?
What are the difficulties in forming trust in criminal markets and online settings?
What kind of criminal organisations rely more on trust?
What legitimates criminal activity?
What is the relationship between technology and trust?
Task
The aim of this seminar is to examine trust as an interactional quality and consider how it manifests and is manipulated in various settings, digital and real world and the vulnerabilities involved.
To start, read Gambetta’s theory of trust signalling
Gambetta D (2009) Signaling. In: The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. Oxford University Press Oxford, pp. 168–194.
https://academic-oup-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/edited-volume/38173/chapter/333032955
Prepare around the following questions
Thinking about your own use of digital systems, how is trust signalled between yourself and others, and by the platforms being used?
In what ways is trust needed in: darknet cryptomarkets, street drug exchanges, and ransomware outfits?
What technologies and techniques support trust?
Using Gambetta, what methods do cybercriminal operators and others use to establish trust?
How might trust be used to undermine or attack cryptomarkets or other criminal operations? Should it be?
8 – Business and cultural models in organised crime economies
Introduction
This session looks in more depth at the kinds of cooperation and performance by people involved in organised crime and illicit economies. What princples of organisation are used, what codes of practice and honour are deployed, and how do people stabilise their organisations and networks? We look at how these understandings are shared and gain force culturally, and also what the limits of that are. We look at emotional performance as one way of structuring and regulating interaction in these environments.
Task
This seminar will examine performance, codes of the street and the gentrification hypothesis, using Curtis R, Wendel T and Spunt B (2002) We Deliver: The Gentrification of Drug Markets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side: Rockville, MD: National Institute of Justice. Though quote old this report prefigures themes that have become much more common in illicit market research now.
Reading the report we will discuss:
What does gentrification mean in the context of drug markets?
How does gentrification manifest? What signals are used? What kinds of performance are involved?
What technological and organisational innovations support it?
Critically link the hypothesis to themes of surveillance, racialisation, and displacement. Is gentrification simply a one-way street? What assumptions are made in the hypothesis about ethnicity and social class for example?
Could you apply the same hypothesis to other types of organised and market crime we have discussed, for example, sex work?
For a more up to date example see
Martin J (2018) Cryptomarkets, systemic violence and the’gentrification hypothesis’. Addiction 113(5). Wiley-Blackwell, Wiley: 797–798.
9 – Community Impacts and Crimes of Power
This session examines the community impacts of organised crime and illicit markets. It discusses the interplay of racialisation, state violence, and corruption in different settings. It asks if theoretical constructs and concepts have centred the West in a way that has limited our analysis and understanding.
Task
We will be discussing how studying the community impact of organised crime and illicit markets would benefit from a de-centred perspective.
Is Europe and North America ‘centred’ in the cases we have discussed in the course? What are the implications of that?
How might it be de-centred? What could a Southern criminology perspective show about globalisation and crime organisation?
Can we move past methodological and theoretical nationalism in crime research?
For the seminar, use:
Winton A (2014) Gangs in global perspective. Environment and Urbanization 26(2). SAGE Publications Ltd: 401–416. DOI: 10.1177/0956247814544572.
and Panfil VR (2017) The Gang’s All Queer: The Lives of Gay Gang Members. NYU Press. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1ggjjrn. Chapter 3 ‘Gay Gangs Becoming “Known”: Respect, Violence, and Chosen Family’ and Chapter 7 ‘Tired of Being Stereotyped” Urban Gay Men in Underground Economies’
There is quite lot of homophobic language in the Panfil reading.
10 – Control and Simulation Exercise
We discuss enforcement activity against illicit markets and organisations.
We ask:
What are the politics of crime control?
How can we evaluate the success of disruption efforts?
How do law enforcement and other agencies set their priorities for targeting criminal activity?
How should they?
The class will be divided into two teams. One will design an organised crime group, the other will try and disrupt it at each stage.
Both teams can use the UK Police College’s Disrupting Serious and Organised Criminals Menu of Tactics (edited version below)
The simulation will follow these stages: