Injury control research has come a long way,but more needs to be done

Since 2002, the Institute for Peace Promotion and Injury/Violence Prevention (CISALVA) at the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia and the Colombia Program at Georgetown University have developed and implemented 21 epidemiologically based municipal crime observatories in intermediate-sized municipalities in Colombia. These crime observatories serve as monitoring centres that provide low cost, geo-referenced methods of data collection and analysis, which allow cities to develop more responsive policies and prevention programmes and enhance governance. This article focuses on the methodology employed and lessons learned that may be applicable to similar settings. Worth noting within the results was a significant decrease in homicides after the first year of the programme. Whether or not such results could be attributed to the method or to the nature of the interventions and policy initiatives stemming from it remains open to conjecture.     

Entrepreneurs as prime targets: Insights from Mexican ventures on the link between venture visibility and crime of varying severity

This study addresses entrepreneurs as targets of crime. Leveraging insights from strategic responses to institutional pressures as the main theoretical frame, coupled with supporting insights from routine activities theory and interview data from 14 entrepreneurs who have been victims of crime, we introduce entrepreneur-led ventures becoming targets of crime via their engagement in routine activities that increase venture visibility. We then conceptualize that crime severity pushes entrepreneurs toward venture visibility-reduction responses, such as truncating growth, relocating, or discontinuing the venture. Survey data from 87,486 legally registered entrepreneur-led ventures in Mexico provide strong support for the relationships in our theoretical model. We find that as routine venture activities increase, entrepreneurs encounter crime of increasing severity, with the routine venture activity of making transactions at a bank serving as the strongest attractor of crime. Building on these findings, we observe an indirect effect through crime severity such that the choice to relocate the venture is the most likely response to being targeted by criminals. Our results advance the literature at the intersection of crime and entrepreneurship, especially in developing economies, and offers venture visibility as a mechanism that shapes both criminals' targeting of ventures and entrepreneurs' attempts to reduce being targeted.     

Economic growth and crime against small and medium sized enterprises in developing economies

Several studies have explored the relationship between economy-level crime rates or individual-level crime and economic growth. However, few studies have examined the relationship between economic growth and crime against firms. Using data for about 12,000 firms in 27 developing countries this study finds that economic growth is negatively associated with crime. This relationship is stronger for small and medium firms than large firms. The study also explores several economy-wide factors and their influence on the growth–crime relationship for small and medium enterprises. The results are robust to various sensitivity checks.     

辩护人、诉讼代理人毁灭、伪造证据，妨害作证罪考察

现行刑法第306条——判处辩护人、诉讼代理人毁灭、伪造证据,妨害作证罪的立法根据在于,该罪行具有侵害国家司法作用的高度危险。由于辩护人、诉讼代理人在刑事诉讼中的特殊作用,决定了该罪行应当从重处罚。引诱行为的实质内容在于使证人违背事实改变证言或者作伪证,而不在于引诱的具体行为方式,即使是诱导式询问的某些特别类型也存在构成刑法第306条罪行的余地。刑法第306条与第307条是特别犯与一般犯的关系。辩护人、诉讼代理人藏匿、隐避证人的,属于本罪的毁灭证据的行为;辩护人、诉讼代理人明知是他人伪造、变追的证据而使用的,应当属于本罪的伪造证据的行为。     

Crime,community social capital and entrepreneurship: Evidence from Australian communities

Crime is an anti-social blight on communities that increases the cost of doing business, including for entrepreneurs. Drawing on Australian longitudinal data, this study examines the links between crime rates and the propensity for entrepreneurship within communities. We do so by matching propensity for entrepreneurship with types of crime found at the community level where crime occurs. We find that higher total crime rates, crimes against the person and property crime, significantly lower the propensity for entrepreneurship in communities. We also show that the core facets of community social capital – trust, membership in voluntary organizations and support and cooperation – mediate this relationship.Executive summaryWe comprehensively examine whether higher community crime rates – crime on people and crime on property – cause lower rates of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship research extensively examines how gaining social capital, defined as the social resources one gains within one's community, promotes entrepreneurship. This study considers whether a pervasive community dynamic in crime impedes entrepreneurship. Specifically, we show that the two main kinds of crime – people and property – inhibit entrepreneurship.We show the facets of community social capital that mediate the relationship between crime and entrepreneurship. We inform the role of community-based social capital in promoting entrepreneurship (Kwon et al., 2013) by considering how higher crime lowers social capital and in turn entrepreneurship. We show that core facets of relational social capital – trust, voluntary membership in community bodies, support, and cooperation – mediate the relationship between crime and entrepreneurship. Likewise, communities with more robust reserves of social capital are better able to withstand crime and promote entrepreneurship.Examining the link between crime and entrepreneurship allows us to contribute to the literature on entrepreneurship and social capital. We discuss the various ways in which crime diminishes social capital to shape entrepreneurship. In our framework that is predicated on theory on community social capital, crime creates distrust because it causes citizens to be wearier and more suspicious of each other, impeding sharing of ideas and knowledge for ventures. Crime impedes the efficacy and membership of community-based organizations that allow entrepreneurs to network. Crime reduces the support available for founders to start and sustain businesses in focal communities, as individuals seek opportunities and resources outside their communities. Crime diminishes the extent to which people take pride in and identify with their communities, as evidenced by voluntary membership in community organizations. Crime reduces collaboration because it leads to self-protective behaviors, including flight from high-crime communities, that hinder norms of reciprocity. Crime reduces cooperation as criminals are more likely to resort to coercion, as enforced by monitoring and violence, to solve business problems.Findings rely on a comprehensive database of crime rates across Australian postcodes. Crime is typically a localized phenomenon – it affects business outcomes in local communities. We obtain community-level crime rates from each Australian state and territory police force or relevant government agencies and match these data with entrepreneurship rates by postcode. Our primary identification strategy follows Dustmann and Fasani (2016), who estimate the effect of local area crime on mental health in the United Kingdom (UK). This identification strategy removes the effects of residential sorting and correlates crime with time-varying unobserved entrepreneurship determinants if there is no endogenous migration from local crime. The main findings are robust to instrumenting for local area crime to which movers are exposed and for historical abortion rates in the state or territory where the individual lives, as well as a number of other approaches to obtaining causal inference.The article holds considerable practical relevance for policymakers seeking to promote community entrepreneurship. Our study is highly relevant to community leaders and policymakers working to boost local entrepreneurship. Findings strongly suggest that efforts to reduce crime are a primary mechanism to protect social capital within communities and, therefore, entrepreneurship. Policy initiatives dedicated to creating and expanding social ventures would a) boost entrepreneurship and social capital and b) mitigate the detrimental effects of crime on entrepreneurship (Wry and York, 2017).     

Assessing the effects of corruption and crime on firm performance: evidence from Latin America

This paper uses a survey of private firms to assess the effects of corruption on the economic prospects of firms. The paper studies whether corruption and crime affect sales, investment and employment growth at the firm level, and whether bribes and illegal payments by firms reduce bureaucratic interference. The paper finds that corruption and crime substantially reduce sales growth and that the reported levels of corruption and bureaucratic interferences are positively correlated at the firm level. Overall, the results of the paper suggest that corruption and crime substantially reduce firm competitiveness and that corruption is unlikely to have any positive effects.     

法治中国语境下的积极预防犯罪

在法治社会条件下,积极预防犯罪,必须深化治理方式的改革。在思维模式上,要加强公民的法治意识教育、努力提高全社会的防控能力,建立健全社区犯罪立体化社会治安防控体系,把维护公共安全、服务经济发展、保障人民安居乐业作为目标;在治理方式上,应以治本为目的,运用综合治理模式预防犯罪,防患于未然。从而形成在法治语境下积极预防犯罪的体系,实现建设平安中国、法治中国的目的。     

Towards a classification of marine wildlife crime: Marketing strategies to curtail illegal fishing,malicious acts,and waterway pollution

Much effort has been dedicated to fighting wildlife crime with modest results. This paper focuses on marine wildlife crime, which suffers from a certain level of neglect due to terrestrial bias (a predominant focus on land animals). Despite legislative and enforcement efforts, there has been little integration of marketing techniques to curtail marine wildlife crime. For these reasons, we set out to study current issues surrounding marine wildlife crime by conducting interviews with three experts in areas of marine education, research, and legislation. The interviews provide an overview of the threats to marine wildlife, aid in the development of a classification of marine wildlife crime, and provide strategies as to what marketing actions may be useful to reduce it.     

我国上市公司高管犯罪现象分析

对2001-2005年上半年56家涉及高管犯罪的沪深上市公司进行分析,发现高管犯罪的上市公司业绩普遍低于沪深上市公司平均值,而且在高管犯罪信息被披露的当年业绩达到最低点;高管犯罪的上市公司与所属行业无关;犯罪高管年轻化;高管犯罪绝大多数是经济犯罪;高管掌握的权力愈大,犯罪的可能性愈大。     

Interrelated harms: Examining the associations between victimization,accidents, and criminal behavior

Problem. This study investigated the existence of positive associations between criminal behavior (‘offending’), traffic accidents, falls and tripping, and being the victim of a crime. The motivation for the study was that the finding of positive associations would support the thesis that there may exist a broad behavioral trait, such as a tendency to take risks, which links criminal behavior to diverse negative outcomes. Method. To investigate these issues, data were used from a national sample of the Dutch population. The data were analyzed with the uniform association model. We controlled for age, gender and various socioeconomic variables. Results. The results show that there are relatively strong interrelationships between every one of the four concepts, with only minor qualifications. The weakest relationship was found between falling/tripping and being the victim of a personal or violent crime, with an odds ratio of 1.7. The other interrelationships produced higher odds ratios. Conclusions. Although research relating personality characteristics to accidents has not been common, we conclude that our findings support the idea that there may be a personality factor, such as risk-taking or low self-control, underlying offending behaviors as well as behaviors increasing the likelihood of accidents and crime victimization. Implications for prevention and treatment are also discussed.     

牟利型犯罪的经济分析

对牟利型犯罪的经济分析是以成本收益为工具 ,着重对牟利型犯罪的个人成本、社会成本、个人收益和社会收益进行分析 ,并建立了衡量牟利型犯罪的个人成本、社会成本、个人收益和社会收益的模式 ,在此基础上得出对牟利犯罪应优先适用财产刑的结论。     

论犯罪客体与犯罪对象的关系

犯罪客体与犯罪对象是两个联系紧密又难于区分的概念，在考察犯罪构成时，二者是一个有机的整体，缺一不可。只确定犯罪客体不确定犯罪对象，则整个案件会显得过于理论化不能与实践生活相联系，更不能全面的了解案情；反之只是研究犯罪对象而忽略犯罪客体则不能确定案件的性质，所以二者是相辅相成缺一不可的。     

抢劫罪和强奸罪中“暴力”手段行为的比较

暴力作为抢劫罪和强奸罪中最常见的手段行为,在各自的罪名中却有着并不完全相同的表现形式和特征。暴力作为两罪的手段行为,其实施必须以实现相应的犯罪为目的;暴力行为必须由行为人亲自实施．利用他人的暴力形成的便利条件实施劫财或者奸淫行为,对相应犯罪的成立具有不同的意义;暴力所针对的对象也只能是被害人本人,并且对物的暴力不能构成暴力型的相关犯罪;两罪中的暴力都包括危害人身安全和限制人身自由两种方式,但强奸罪的暴力还要求具有对人身直接侵害的特征;在暴力强度上,抢劫的暴力要求达到“足以抑制对方的反抗”的程度,而强奸的暴力只要达到“使其反抗变得显著困难”的程度就够了,并且强奸的暴力不包括故意杀人。     

解释学视域下的集资诈骗罪重构——以主观目的、行为对象的实质分析为进路

刑法将集资诈骗罪作为普通诈骗罪的特殊类型予以规定,原本符合集资诈骗罪的情形必然符合诈骗罪。然而,由于司法机关在办案过程中对集资诈骗罪的解读不甚严谨,产生了诸多误区。其实,对集资诈骗罪中的“非法占有目的”认定不能仅仅根据司法解释而做简单的推定,对“社会公众”的理解也不可望文生义,只有正确解读好本罪中的这两个要素,才能对集资诈骗案件进行正确认定。     

Retail employee guardianship behaviour: A phenomenological investigation

Supermarkets suffer significant losses as a consequence of shoplifting. Amongst the existing electronic and manual surveillance measures for retail crime management, the role of employees in preventing or controlling retail crime has not been systematically addressed within the extant literature. This paper contributes to addressing this gap by examining how employers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement influences employee proclivity towards guardianship behaviour in shoplifting prevention. A phenomenological approach is adopted comprising semi-structured interviews of twenty-nine shop-floor employees of two national supermarket chains within a cosmopolitan city of New Zealand. Findings strongly support the suggestion that employee perceptions of employer internal and external CSR may shape their feelings of organisational attachment, resulting in employee guardianship behaviour that manifests in in-store shoplifting prevention. Further, from a societal perspective, this study suggests that a reduction in retail crime contributes towards positive relationships among key stakeholders such as supermarkets, their employees, and society at large based on the social, environmental, and employee welfare practices of supermarkets.     

Ten years andean pact: A reexamination

On May 26 the heads of state of five Andean countries—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela¹—celebrated in Cartagena (Colombia) the tenth anniversary of the so-called Cartagena Agreement which forms the legal base of economic integration within this Latin American subregion. Has the Andean approach to integration proved to be feasible in the first decade of its application? What have been the main achievements and failures, and what are the future perspectives of cooperation within the subregion?     

Some Ethical Considerations on the use of Criminal Records in the Labor Market: in Defense of a New Practice

Employers’ access to and use of criminal records as a selection mechanism in the labor market makes it far more difficult for ex-offenders to find jobs, especially regular, well-paid jobs, than those without criminal convictions. The paper asks whether there is anything morally problematic about this practice. The aims of the paper are twofold. First, arguments based on premises of wrongful discrimination against the current, commonest use of criminal records are critically discussed. It is argued that employers do not necessarily engage in morally wrongful discrimination against job applicants when they use criminal records in recruitment screening, but it is also argued that ex-offenders who apply for jobs are subject to what can be called “structural and morally wrongful discrimination” when laws allow employers to request (or directly access) a job applicant’s full criminal record. Second, preliminary proposals on how criminal records can be used by employers in a way that avoids wrongful structural discrimination of ex-offenders will be presented and critically assessed. I suggest that it should be lawful for an employer to access an applicant’s criminal records only where there is a relevant and special match or link between the crime on the records and the job being applied for and the crime is serious. This proposal is defended against two objections, one based on concerns about crime prevention and the other based on the employer’s interest in knowing whom not to hire.     

The looming shadow of illicit trade on the internet

Pirates on the virtual sea are supplying their illicit digital content and goods through cyberlockers and darknet markets. The deep web hosts darknet marketplaces selling a variety of wares, such as narcotics and weapons, and is testimony to the growth of illicit trade on the internet. The challenge of web sites that host digital content piracy is exacerbated through linkages to a variety of malware schemes that have created a lucrative crimeware economy. Digital thieves target unsuspecting consumers as digital bait to derive profits from a variety of malware schemes such as ransomware and malvertising. The hijacking of access to computers and their digital content in order to ransom them back to consumers or organizations is considered to be one of the leading threats of internet crime. Malvertising schemes are plaguing the internet advertising business—criminals are reaping profits by posting legitimate advertisements at content theft sites or using an army of botnets to fake advertising traffic. A variety of stratagems are evolving to curb this illicit trade, including fostering multi-lateral enforcement tactics, updating legislation to circumvent this type of crime on the internet, training digital savvy citizens, and creating private-sector remedies.     

Liability of Foreignness in Fast-Expanding Markets: Evidence from Ghana

In this study, we sought to establish if the idea of liability of foreignness (LOF) also persists in the fast-expanding markets (FEMs) and whether there are certain firm characteristics that can mitigate or accentuate this effect. We utilize data from the World Bank enterprise surveys conducted in Ghana in 2007 and 2013. We operationalize liability as the probability that a firm suffered from a crime in the year under study. We also specify empirical probit and instrumental probit models with controls to answer the above research question. We find that there is LOF in fast-expanding markets, and this effect is robust to different specifications. Given that our liability is crime, we moderate the LOF effect with data on security expenditure. The results still show that even if firms increased their security expenditure, the LOF effect still persisted. The study makes a contribution to the international business literature by testing the LOF effect in a new unit of analysis and is also one of the earliest to operationalize a firm's liability in the form of crime it suffers in its operating environment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Return and volatility spillovers among CIVETS stock markets

Coined in 2009, the CIVETS refers to Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa as a new group of frontier emerging markets with young and growing populations and dynamic economies. We provide a first look into the return and volatility spillovers between the CIVETS countries by employing causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance tests. The empirical results indicate that the contemporaneous spillover effects are generally low. Nevertheless, CIVETS stock markets may exhibit higher degrees of co-movements at times. The structure of the causal relationships further suggests the presence of intra-regional and inter-regional return and volatility interdependence effects.