Security Journal最新文献

The vehicle theft rate in the United States declined 80 percent between 1990 and 2020. Remarkably, this remains unexplained. This study examines historical evidence including reports to Congress plus automobile industry data from the Federal Register. Legislation incentivised security improvements that were fitted to high-risk vehicles from the late 1980s. Analysis of the industry data finds that theft of vehicles with electronic engine immobilizers declined 80 percent relative to a matched control group and theft of new secure vehicles declined before older vehicles. Theft declined gradually over the years as secure vehicles permeated the national vehicle fleet, the prolonged decline reflecting the arms race between manufacturers' responses and offender effort to circumvent security. The study concludes that the electronic engine immobilizer caused the great American car crime decline. If this induced declining crime more generally, the electronic engine immobilizer may be the most important crime prevention device of recent history.

Project Servator is a strategic method of policing designed to deter, detect and disrupt a wide range of criminal activity including terrorism. This paper is the first empirical study to evaluate the stop and search aspect of Servator deployments. We compare the outcomes of 3488 routine stop and searches and 510 Servator stop and searches to determine whether the stop and search tactics used in this initiative produce more positive outcomes than routine stop and searches. We also compare outcomes of stop and searches that occurred on the basis of suspicious behaviour alone, by ethnicity, and through using a geographically matched sample. Collectively, the results indicate that stop and searches that occur during Servator deployments are more efficient than routine stop and search.

With the rise of mediatization, open-source intelligence (OSINT) has evolved into a decentralized form of intelligence gathering, influenced by both political and commercial logic. This transformation has positioned social media as a primary source of OSINT, enhancing the capabilities of non-state actors and significantly impacting international politics, particularly in the realm of great-power competition. Through an analysis spanning individual, state, and systemic levels, this article examines OSINT’s role in shaping contemporary international politics. By exploring case studies such as the Russo-Ukrainian War, Israel-Hamas War, and strategic competition between China and the United States, this article illuminates how OSINT influences decision-making processes and global power struggles and contributes to a deeper understanding of the evolving landscape of intelligence and its implications for statecraft.

We examine how stakeholders (n = 74) in the United Kingdom, Finland and Norway perceive security authorities’ online surveillance capabilities, and how these perceptions form patterns transcending national borders and organisational boundaries. Using a Q-methodological approach, we found variation within and between nations that is usually obscured in the polarised public debates. Furthermore, our stakeholders presented areas of consensus not usually apparent in public discourses. We argue for using awareness of this nuance and areas of convergence as platforms on which to build more effective public debates to further principles of deliberative democracy.

Crime involves different individuals interacting in complex social and physical settings. Often, crime problem solvers reach for a common generic response, when they need to consider a number of possible solutions. Thinking tools can help. In this article, we show how uniting an injury prevention tool—the Haddon Matrix used widely in public health—and a crime prevention tool—the crime problem triangle used widely in policing—can provide guidance to crime problem solvers. We call our hybrid the General Problem-Solving Matrix (GPSM). We apply GPSM to rape and burglary to illustrates its features. We conclude the article by examining the alternative versions of GPSM in crime prevention.

This article seeks to examine the co-productions of security and emerging technologies in the two contexts of forensic genetics and forensic facial identification. These surfacing co-productions, deemed here as ‘forensic biosecurity’, are evolving rapidly in both theoretical and practical terms. Definitions and conceptualisations of security are contingent and multiple, impacting forensic biological techniques and innovations in both predictable and unpredictable ways. The military, counter-terrorism, law enforcement, immigration, customs, border patrol, mass disasters, cold case reviews, health, defence, private security, and biometric applications are just a few of the many security environments where forensic biological techniques are applied. The continual development of variations in forensic genetics and facial identification renders a futher blurring of traditional evidence with that of intelligence. Drawing in particular from Joly’s (in: S. Hilgartner, C. Miller, and R. Hagendijk (eds) Science and democracy: Making knowledge and making power in the biosciences and beyond, Taylor and Francis, London, 2015) work on emerging technologies, forensic biosecurity is analysed from a science and technology studies (STS) perspective. An emerging technology in the initial stages is thought to be highly flexible with the potential impacts on society and criminal justice being possibly difficult to predict. Once the science and/or technology has become entrenched and mainstream, it may be difficult to change. The enthusiasm portrayed by law enforcement and security agencies regarding emerging technologies, shows that it is important to remain somewhat cautious about the proliferation of these techniques. While such science and technologies appear to be effective and innovative in the present, it is difficult to accurately forecast or predict the future consequences of such innovations.

Traditional crime has been falling for some time in most countries. However, developing technologies and our use of them are creating new opportunities for offending. For example, estimates from the Crime Survey of England and Wales indicate that in the UK, online fraud and related offences account for as many crimes as do “traditional” offences. To date, academia, law enforcement and governments have been reactive both in terms of identifying new and emerging forms of offending and in developing approaches to address them. In this paper, I will discuss the future crime agenda, and how futures thinking can help identify future crime opportunities and security threats including online fraud, crimes involving artificial intelligence, and crime in the metaverse. The paper will close with a discussion of the implications for theory and crime prevention.

In this article, we discuss the role of urban planning professionals in situational crime prevention. We begin by examining their role as city “shapers” and the reasons behind their frequent neglect of crime-related factors in their decision-making process. We also explore why criminology tends to underestimate the influence of urban planning professionals on the urban environment, a factor crucial for effective crime prevention. To highlight the disconnection between urban planning and crime prevention, we present findings from a survey conducted with urban planners and safety experts in 290 Swedish municipalities. The article concludes with future research and practice recommendations, stressing the urgent need for improved communication and collaboration between urban shapers and environmental criminologists and a more comprehensive understanding from all parties involved.

In this special issue, five articles demonstrate the impact of contemporary Environmental Criminology theory on the understanding of crime and the development of crime prevention practices in both urban and rural contexts. The articles exemplify the development of Environmental Criminology as a field that extends beyond crime in physical spaces to encompass offenses in cyberspace, illustrating the field’s adaptability and relevance in an increasingly digital world. Authored by environmental criminologists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, these articles offer a range of international perspectives, thereby contributing to the field of security while addressing broader social issues.