Asian Journal of Criminology最新文献

Despite a notable increase in the desistance literature, Asia remains a significant gap in this field. We conducted a scoping review to provide an overview of the current state of desistance research in Asia and to identify the factors that facilitate desistance in this region. In January 2024, literature searches were conducted across seven databases in January 2024: CINAHL, MEDLINE, ProQuest, PubMed, PsychINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. After screening, we identified nine relevant studies. Our scoping review revealed that desistance research in Asia remains at a nascent stage and is disproportionately focused on East Asia. Additionally, we identified four key areas of focus in the region’s desistance research: (1) family relationships, (2) social networks and support, (3) religion, and (4) culture.

The rapid evolution of AI-enabled future crimes, including synthetic identity fraud, deepfake scams, and cryptocurrency-based money laundering, has exposed critical gaps in traditional regulatory frameworks. Yet, few studies have examined how multi-layered responsive policing strategies can protect potential victims of future crimes in China and Southeast Asia, where digital payment adoption is surging. This article fills this gap by empirically investigating AI-empowered responsive regulation, drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with frontline police officers and 12 senior digital experts from major digital platforms in China and Southeast Asia. Our study introduces a novel AI-empowered “regulatory pyramid” framework, synthesizing insights from law enforcement and private-sector cybersecurity innovations to combat modular, adaptive, and decentralized crime networks. The AI-empowered regulatory pyramid is a set of tech-driven responsive policing at three layers: (1) AI-empowered capacity building for protecting potential victims, (2) restorative community policing disrupting cyber money mule networks, and (3) incapacitative policing targeting cybercrime syndicates. Empirical evidence indicates all three levels of responsive policing have been observed and are available in China, but cyberfraud policing practices in Southeast Asia often focus on capacity building due to a lack of state capacity and resources, which explains why the strict policing enforcement in China led to the relocation of cyberfraud criminals from China to Southeast Asia and the rise of transnational future crimes. We also found that while escalating enforcement via AI-empowered strategies yields short-term deterrence in China, long-term resilience depends on poverty-alleviation-oriented capacity-building and cross-border police cooperation against transnational future crimes.

This study investigates sentencing disparities between buyers and traders of trafficked women in China between 2014 and 2020. Drawing on a unique dataset of court verdicts referencing Articles 240 and 241 of the Chinese Criminal Law, we employ ordinary least squares (OLS), logistic regression, and hierarchical models to examine how legal, extralegal, and contextual factors shape sentencing outcomes, including fines, prison terms, and probation decisions. The results reveal that traders are punished more severely than buyers across nearly all sentencing dimensions. For traders, statutory aggravating circumstances exert significant influence on sentencing, indicating a relatively consistent application of written law. In contrast, buyers’ sentences appear less heavily affected by legal aggravating or mitigating factors, with outcomes shaped more by demographics and transaction price. Wald tests confirm that identical variables have significantly different effects depending on whether the defendant is a buyer or a trader. These findings suggest that the disparity is not only rooted in legislative design but also reflects judicial discretion and inconsistent prosecutorial framing. We argue that, while long-term reform may require legislative revision, in the short term, sentencing for buyers should be tightened at the judicial level through stricter adherence to existing legal provisions. This study contributes theoretically by demonstrating how sentencing disparities between traders and buyers reflect broader debates on deterrence, proportionality, and the role of judicial discretion.

Dating apps have revolutionized modern relationships by alleviating spatiotemporal barriers once posed by traditional dating rituals, allowing users to connect with a greater pool of potential partners based on desired traits and shared interests. Despite the various benefits of dating apps, their emergence has also introduced new risks, including heightened exposure to cyberstalking victimization. While prior studies have examined cyberstalking victimization broadly, limited research has explored how dating app use specifically contributes to victimization. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between user demographics, platform features, and app-related behaviors on dating app-facilitated cyberstalking victimization. Specifically, using a sample of adults (N = 848) who have used dating apps, this exploratory study examined how factors such as the number of dating apps used, types of information disclosure, and user experiences impact victimization risk. Findings revealed that 27% of respondents reported experiencing dating app-facilitated cyberstalking victimization. Further, analyses revealed that using more dating apps, disclosing more social identity within one’s dating app profile, using more premium features, adopting a pseudonym or nickname on the dating app, and matching with an underage user significantly increased the likelihood of experiencing dating app-facilitated cyberstalking victimization. Relatedly, respondents who identified as non-White were significantly less likely to experience dating app-facilitated cyberstalking victimization. These findings underscore the evolving nature of cybercrime and highlight the need for targeted prevention strategies, platform regulation, and legal responses.

Facial recognition technology (FRT) has become a central component of China’s “smart policing” strategy, promising greater efficiency, improved crime detection, and enhanced public safety. However, its rapid adoption has outpaced the development of clear legal frameworks and oversight mechanisms, creating operational challenges and ethical concerns. Using an ethnographic approach in an eastern coastal city in China, this study explores how FRT reshapes policing practices and highlights its dilemma as both a tool for efficiency and a source of ethical tension. The findings reveal key issues: FRT’s strengths and limitations, resource dilemmas behind surveillance blind spots, accuracy challenges and misidentification risks, contradictions in permission management, and ethical conflicts between security and privacy. FRT’s deployment also accelerates surveillance normalization, embedding pervasive monitoring into daily life while reinforcing state control at the cost of individual rights. This study highlights the urgent need for regulatory clarity, enhanced oversight, and ethical safeguards. By centering on grassroots officers’ perspectives, it offers critical insights and policy recommendations to balance technological advancement with public trust and rights protection in China’s digital policing future.

The widespread implementation of digital technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, has profoundly transformed policing in China. Several Chinese cities have recently launched humanoid robots performing patrol duty. However, little is known about frontline officers’ attitudes toward police robots and the potential organizational and individual correlates of such attitudes. Using survey data from 1194 Chinese police officers, this study examines the relationships between AI literacy, organizational justice, and occupational wellbeing and officers’ attitudes toward two types of humanoid police robots: a “service robot” focused on public relations and community policing and a “crime-fighting robot” engaged in surveillance, intelligence gathering, predictive policing, and criminal investigations. Chinese police officers show a stronger preference for the crime-fighting robot over the service robot. Regression results show that controlling for background characteristics, officers with greater AI knowledge, more AI training, stronger perceptions of organizational support for the use of AI, and higher self-legitimacy are more supportive of police robots. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Stalking and cyberstalking are pervasive forms of interpersonal victimization that cause significant psychological, emotional, financial, and physical harms. The rapid growth of digital communication and surveillance technologies has expanded offenders’ ability to monitor, harass, and intimidate victims across both physical and virtual spaces. Employing data from the 2016 and 2019 Stalking Victimization Supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey and drawing from the Routine Activities framework, we assess trends across three broad victimization categories—offline, online, and hybrid victimization—and 12 specific forms of victimization, as well as the demographic and situational correlates associated with them. Logistic regression models with interaction terms were estimated to detect subgroup-specific changes. Results show that the overall prevalence of offline, online, and hybrid victimization remained stable between 2016 and 2019. However, certain tactics changed over time: reports of electronic tracking increased, while reports of receiving unwanted items declined, and electronic surveillance became more common. Notably, a widening gender gap emerged in electronic surveillance, with men significantly more likely than women to report this technology-facilitated tactic in 2019. These findings suggest that while the broad patterns of stalking victimization are stable, specific behaviors, particularly those enabled by digital technologies, are evolving and may affect population groups differently over time.

Sexual harassment in online dating is an increasingly prevalent form of violence, but existing research has not fully captured its distinctive dynamics and severity. Drawing on Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence, this study examines the experiences of Chinese women subjected to online dating harassment and the strategies they employ to resist it. The analysis identifies this dispersed, invisible, and attritional form of harassment as a manifestation of slow violence, which inflicts gradual yet irreversible harm on women over time. In addition, our findings indicate that female victims actively adopt preventive resistance strategies that could mitigate the harm at the individual level. However, such efforts remain largely confined within the victimized community and are insufficient to challenge the structural roots underpinning the pervasive nature of online sexual harassment.

This study provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of appellate decisions in China’s Pao Fen (跑分) cases, a rapidly evolving form of cyber-enabled money laundering involving “money mule” operations. Analyzing 661 criminal appeals from China Judgements Online, the study borrows its conceptual framework from four major socio-legal theories and applies logistic regression, moderation analysis, stepwise selection, and CART modeling to identify key predictors of appellate success. Results show that appeals filed by the procuratorate, and voluntary fine payment significantly increase success rates, while denial of charges and vague legal arguments reduce them. Demographic factors such as age, gender, and education moderate these effects, revealing implicit biases in judicial reasoning. The study critically reflects on the limitations of China’s appellate system in responding to technologically complex crimes like Pao Fen, where participant culpability is often blurred by coercion, deception, and digital intermediaries. It offers critical implications for judicial reform, emphasizing the need for context-sensitive review mechanisms, improved prosecutorial oversight, and more equitable recognition of defendants’ structural vulnerabilities.

Extensive research has documented the enduring effects of parental divorce and parental migration on children’s propensity for criminal and delinquent behaviors. Despite the unprecedented rural-to-urban migration and the sharply increasing divorce rate in contemporary China, there is a paucity of research investigating how these two significant social changes independently and jointly influence children’s risk of delinquency. Using a probability sample of middle school students in rural China, this study finds that parental divorce consistently elevated children’s engagement in delinquency. Furthermore, in terms of parental migration and caretaking arrangements, children cared for by a single grandparent when both parents migrated were identified as the most vulnerable group. Other alternative caretaking arrangements (e.g., maternal migration) did not differ significantly from the non-parent-migrant group. Additionally, this study reveals that the detrimental effect of parental divorce was contingent on caretaking arrangements, with the negative impact being the most pronounced for children living with rural single mothers. Collectively, these findings provide empirical evidence for the development of targeted and tailored prevention and treatment programs for social workers, community leaders, and policymakers at local and state levels.