Security Journal最新文献

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.

This article explores the crime experience of the Amish, a rural-located religious subculture that is rarely studied by criminologists. Evidence is derived from narratives of crime experiences reported by scribes to a monthly Amish periodical called The Diary. Every month there are reports about community events from hundreds of Amish settlements, including crime. A routine activities approach helps frame the results. From 168 crime narratives, both burglary/attempted burglary and larceny/attempted larceny are the most frequently described. Suggestions for future research, including an expanded collection of crime narratives from The Diary, plus interviews with both law enforcement and other criminal justice practitioners and Amish crime victims will advance criminological understandings of Amish vulnerability to crime. The article concludes with suggested actions to improve safety and security for Amish communities using environmental criminology theories.

The familiar stranger is a social phenomenon that emerges from the serial reproduction of daily routines, structured around urban places and practices, that results in repeated encounters with the same individuals over time. Scholarship suggests that increased familiarity among individuals might incur crime control benefits at places by reducing individual anonymity and enhancing the moral obligation to obey behavioural norms. Familiarity with place-based norms and regularities can also enhance guardianship capacity and willingness to intervene when problems arise. In this paper, we detail a framework that integrates geographical, sociological, and psychological understandings of urban daily life to conceptualize the familiar stranger as a uniquely urban phenomenon emerging from multiple social processes synchronising in time-space. Our framework highlights the capacity for variation in relation to intensity contingent on daily regularities, place attributes, structures and social norms and provides for future measurement, modelling, and monitoring of familiar strangers as a protective factor against crime that can be ascribed to individuals, places and/or social systems. We include an operationalisation of our framework for a single use case, namely familiar stranger encounters in a public transit network.

This study explores the phenomenon of banditry as a criminal enterprise in Nigeria. By employing qualitative and quantitative data, it provides a historical context for banditry and discusses kidnapping for ransom as its variant. The spatial distribution and patterns of kidnapping incidents are also highlighted. In response to this persistent challenge posed by banditry, the study notes the government and community members have implemented three distinct strategies. They are enhancing security and law enforcement, negotiations, and legislation. The limitations of these responses are also examined. The paper offers guidance on the necessary policy imperatives to effectively combat armed banditry through a multifaceted approach. It emphasizes that addressing the escalating incidents of kidnapping for ransom in the northwest region cannot be addressed independently from the broader need for reform within the security sector of the country. Strengthening border security, preventing the free flow of illicit firearms into the nation, and concerted effort focused on the recruitment, training, and deployment of adequately equipped security personnel to the border areas become pivotal.