Among Latin American countries, Peru has one of the highest crime rates, with 9 out of 10 Peruvians reporting feeling unsafe walking the streets at night. This rooted-in-reality feeling of insecurity may harm citizens' mental health. We study the consequences of the Peruvian Safe Neighborhood...

Can lowering barriers to public services reduce domestic violence? Exploiting the introduction of a non-mandatory police reporting policy, I find that it significantly reduces domestic violence cases reported to the police while increasing hospital-reported cases of domestic assault. I further...

The technological evolution has not only opened new frontiers but has also become an indispensable part of our daily lives. However, the technology that enhances our lives presents a dual reality-it offers opportunities for criminals while creating challenges for law enforcement. Fraud,...

Criminal finances, together with money laundering and asset recovery, are central to many forms of organised crime. In recognition of this, the priorities of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT)1 on fraud, and economic and financial crimes put emphasis on the...

The objective of anti-money laundering (AML) programs is to disrupt the financial infrastructure of criminal organizations, thereby seizing illicit assets and curbing the expansion of these criminal activities. This paper assesses the effectiveness of AML programs in curbing three distinct forms...

How can crime be disrupted effectively without increasing resources? To answer this question, we develop a spatial network model of crime diffusion, using London as a case study. Moving beyond traditional hot spot policing, we identify key player neighborhoods-highly connected areas in the...

Corruption harms communities and impacts the global economy. It discourages business opportunities, hinders foreign aid and investment, and exacerbates inequality. It victimizes society's most vulnerable and marginalized individuals by affecting their ability to meet their basic needs, as well...

The banking sector of three Baltic countries, i.e., Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, was abused by money laundering scandals between 2018 and 2020. The Danske Bank scandal was the largest one and, combined with the other scandals, inevitably triggered a heavy critique of national anti-money...

Perception of white-collar crime seriousness varies from unfortunate incidents that can be excused to a major crime that needs harsh punishment. Students at a university in Romania were asked about their perceptions of seriousness. On a scale from 1 (not serious) to 7 (extremely serious) most...

This paper uses the rare opportunity of the first ever criminal conviction in the UK of a bank for breaches of AML Regulations (NatWest) to examine the AML framework. The article investigates whether the current framework and enforcement are working in addressing the breaches. The article...

The literature on the causes of corruption has been preoccupied with the corrupt individual or the socio-political and economic contexts in which corruption occurs. This has resulted in macro-level counter-corruption approaches that focus on the root causes of corruption. In the last few...

When decision-makers overemphasize salient features under limited attention, biased decisions can result in settings in which decisions should be unbiased. We exploit a sudden shock in the salience of individuals of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands to test the vulnerability of decisions of...

When decision-makers overemphasize salient features under limited attention, biased decisions can result in settings in which decisions should be unbiased. We exploit a sudden shock in the salience of individuals of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands to test the vulnerability of decisions of...

The 2023 Investigations Activity Report highlights our commitment to integrity and transparency in all our activities. The European Investment Bank Group (EIB) is dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and has a zero-tolerance policy for any prohibited conduct. The Group's...

At the beginning of 2017, the College of Eurojust initiated a project designed to assess the impact on judicial cooperation in criminal matters within the European Union (EU) of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Joined Cases C-203/15 and C-698/15, Tele2 Sverige...

The extant literature on marginal deterrence supports the notion that individuals maintain a dynamic decision-making process that yields several ranked outcomes after weighing the risks and rewards. In this article, we conduct a novel large-scale empirical analysis of the marginal deterrence...

Many countries have established national authorities to investigate and prosecute serious and complex white-collar and corporate crime incidents. This article reviews research literature regarding external challenges and barriers for national agencies in Norway (Økokrim), New Zealand (SFO), the...

Across the world each year millions of people are victimised by online crime, many of whom fall victim to online fraud. One of the most enduring and prolific types of online fraud is romance fraud. Romance fraud often leads to financial and psychological devastation of those who are victimised....

This article delves into the organisation of Ivorian cyberfraudsters, known as "brouteurs", who engage in romance scams and sextorsion, and it questions the various structures through which these fraudsters operate. The study's findings are based on data collected through semi-structured...

U.S. law requires the Attorney General to collect data on hate crime victimization from states and municipalities, but states and localities are under no obligation to cooperate by gathering or sharing information. Data production hence varies considerably across jurisdictions. This paper...

The article examines the social acceptability of optimal deterrence policies. While there is much research on lay intuitions of punishment and the counterintuitive nature of economic reasoning, the problem of whether decisions based on optimal deterrence are acceptable remains understudied. I...

IntroductionSports have always held a special place in our hearts - they inspire us, unite us, and bring us together in ways few other things can. But when corruption seeps into the sports industry, it not only tarnishes the spirit of competition but also erodes the trust and faith that fans...

In this paper, I exploit a quasi-random variation in state-level laws that prohibit drunk driving (DUI) checkpoints to estimate the causal effect of DUI checkpoints on traffic fatalities, traffic arrests, and self-reported drunk driving. Leveraging data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting...

There is a vigorous debate on whether arrests for domestic violence (DV) will deter future abuse or create a retaliatory backlash. We study how arrests affect the dynamics of DV using administrative data for over 124,000 DV emergency calls (999 calls) for West Midlands, the second most populous...

There is a vigorous debate on whether arrests for domestic violence (DV) will deter future abuse or create a retaliatory backlash. We study how arrests affect the dynamics of DV using administrative data for over 124,000 DV emergency calls (999 calls) for West Midlands, the second most populous...

This paper addresses police resource allocation across multiple locations, aiming to minimize the overall cost of potential crimes. Unlike previous literature focused on reactive police tasks, we propose a proactive approach that emphasizes crime prevention through deterrence. To account for the...

The criminal legal system is at a crossroads. Calls for abolition are met with calls for modest adjustments or maintenance of the status quo. What frequently emerges from these polarities is a promise that police, prosecutors, judges, and other government actors will use their vast discretion to...

We provide the first quantitative synthesis of the literature on how financial markets react to the disclosure of financial crimes committed by listed firms. While consensus expects negative stock price returns, the exact size of the effect is far from clear. We survey 111 studies published over...