This article analyses the experiences and perceptions of women deprived of liberty and prison staff regarding formal education in Spanish prisons, with particular attention to the educational and gender inequalities that shape access, participation and educational progression. Based on a qualitative design, the study draws on 126 semi-structured interviews conducted with 46 incarcerated women and 80 prison staff from different prisons across Spain. The findings show that formal education occupies an ambivalent position in women’s imprisonment. Many women perceive it as a space for recognition, self-esteem, personal development and the construction of future expectations. However, effective access remains limited by previous trajectories of social exclusion, formal educational provision concentrated mainly at basic levels, limited opportunities in post-compulsory education, accredited vocational training and university studies, as well as digital, organisational and spatial barriers. These limitations are reinforced by an androcentric prison logic and by the insufficient incorporation of a gender perspective into educational planning. The article provides evidence of the need to expand and diversify formal educational provision, improve access to technological resources and strengthen gender-sensitive prison policies that place educational continuity and socio-educational support at the centre of efforts to guarantee the effective right to education in prison.
Why are some illegal markets associated with lethal violence while others are not? Existing cross-national research treats organized crime as a unified phenomenon, obscuring substantial variation in how distinct illicit economies generate lethal outcomes. This paper disaggregates organized crime into specific market categories and examines their differential association with homicide using panel data for 95 countries over 2021–2025. Combining fixed- and random-effects models with structural and institutional controls, the analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity. Arms trafficking shows the strongest and most consistent positive association with homicide across all specifications. Cocaine markets show a positive association in random-effects models but not in fixed-effects estimates, indicating that the cocaine–violence link is driven primarily by structural positioning on trafficking corridors rather than within-country fluctuations over time. Heroin and synthetic drug markets display negative associations, consistent with organizational structures that rely on routinized logistics and corruption-based governance rather than territorial coercion. Human trafficking, human smuggling, and extortion show no systematic association with lethal violence, not because coercion is absent, but because homicide is actively self-defeating in their economic logic since it destroys the human asset, eliminates the revenue stream, and invites disproportionate enforcement. These findings suggest that violence is not an intrinsic feature of illegality but a contingent outcome shaped by two conditions: whether a market requires territorial control, and whether lethal violence undermines the market's own operation. The paper advances a market-governance framework linking patterns of lethal violence to differences in territorial control, logistical organization, and enforcement exposure across illegal markets, with implications for how organized crime is measured, compared, and regulated.
The rapid expansion of decentralised financial ecosystems has fundamentally transformed the landscape of money laundering, compelling criminal justice systems to reckon with assets that are pseudonymous, borderless, and technically resistant to traditional enforcement mechanisms. This article examines the legal, procedural, and evidentiary challenges posed by the freezing and confiscation of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets in money laundering investigations, drawing primarily on Greek law while situating it within the evolving European and comparative framework. The analysis advances three original contributions: first, the doctrine of “Complementary Coupling” (Συμπληρωματική Σύζευξη), which resolves the doctrinal relationship between Articles 261 and 265 of the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure when applied to non-custodial wallets, and which is here defended against objections grounded in the principle of legality and strict construction; second, a set of five Daubert-inspired admissibility criteria for blockchain analytics evidence, reframed around the probabilistic and contestable epistemology of on-chain attribution; and third, a set of de lege ferenda proposals, including a draft Article 265A of the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure, with an explicit distinction between proposals that are transferable across jurisdictions and those that depend on the specific architecture of Greek criminal procedure. Through comparative analysis of French, German, British, and American approaches to compelled decryption, asset freezing, and digital forensic evidence — and through documented enforcement case studies — the article identifies both convergent trends and normative divergences. It argues that, while recent EU instruments (MiCA, the Transfer of Funds Regulation, and Directive (EU) 2024/1260) have created an opportunity for principled harmonisation, the persistent migration of illicit value toward decentralised, non-custodial, and privacy-enhancing infrastructures means that regulation alone cannot render the ecosystem fully traceable, and that procedural and constitutional adaptation remains indispensable.
Ethnic minority youth are overrepresented in police records, yet the relative roles of differential involvement and differential selection remain contested. This study links self-reported offending with official suspect registrations for Dutch juveniles aged 12–18 (N = 5,078) to examine how behavioural and structural factors contribute to ethnic disparities in police contact. Using negative binomial regression models, we find that differences in self-reported offending account for only a modest share of overrepresentation (9–16
Outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs) are a cause of growing concern, not least because their members are found to be disproportionately engaged in serious and organized crime. As of 2020, upon request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Dutch civil court issued civil bans against the most notorious Dutch OMCGs. The current study estimates the effects of those civil bans on the registered crime rate of the banned OMCGs’ membership. We use generalized estimating equations regression analysis with two comparison groups: the membership of nine Dutch OMCGs that were not subjected to a civil ban, and a random sample of Dutch male motorcycle owners not affiliated to any OMCG and use matching weights to control for selection effects. Results show no direct or gradual effect of the civil bans on the registered crime rate of members of the banned clubs. This finding holds when comparisons focus on specific crime types. Potential reasons for the absence of an effect are discussed, as are its implications for future policy.
Following the recent rise of incidents involving explosives in the Netherlands and Sweden, this comparative study provides a qualitative, mainly descriptive analysis of the phenomenon of explosive attacks in both countries. Based on twenty-five interviews with police professionals, the analysis identifies important similarities and differences between the two countries. Perpetrators, motives, targets, and organizational methods are largely comparable. In particular, the findings highlight the high willingness of youngsters and the correspondingly large pool of potential executors for such attacks. The prime motive is generally to convey a message, whereas the predominant targets were dwellings. The findings further underscore the key role of social media and digital platforms in the recruitment, planning, communication, and coordination of attacks. Notable differences concern the underlying conflicts: in the Netherlands, attacks are driven by both criminal and social conflicts; in Sweden, they are primarily linked to organized crime and local gangs. Furthermore, in the Netherlands, it is predominantly professional fireworks that are used as explosives, while a wider variety of explosive materials is employed in Sweden. This comparative study contributes to the emerging literature by providing valuable insights into explosive incidents and identifying avenues for future research.
In times of multiple crises (including a global pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East), trust in institutions is being put to the test. This paper tests two different accounts of the relationship between institutional trust and fear of crime: the social capital perspective (Rothstein Stolle, 2008), which posits that institutional trust reduces fear of crime through perceptions of effective rule enforcement, and the generalization thesis (Hirtenlehner, 2006), which holds that fear of crime primarily reflects broader social and economic anxieties rather than trust deficits per se. We conduct an exploratory conceptual replication based on two independent representative samples from Munich (N = 5,152) and Hamburg (N = 1,082). The data show that low institutional trust is significantly associated with higher fear of crime while controlling for alternative explanations of fear of crime (general anxieties, e.g., economic fears and anomia, incivilities, vulnerability). Based on these findings, we discuss policy-oriented interventions, concluding that strengthening public trust in institutions and addressing broader social disorientation are vital for mitigating crime-related anxieties.
This paper aims to explain how the EU and UK have succeeded in continuing a close law enforcement cooperation post-Brexit, considering the UK’s differentiated EU integration. While it might be easy to focus on the British opt-outs and lukewarm engagement in this domain, it will be argued here that recognising the tangible benefits of joint operational work, prior to Brexit the UK had evolved from a reluctant participant to an aligned actor which actively engaged with EU structures post-Brexit. As will be established through empirical material, practitioners on both sides not only advocated to preserve a maximum of the arrangements, but also dutifully implement the provisions and proactively resolve arising problems since the Agreement’s implementation. A conceptual analysis will demonstrate that the UK exemplified a case of aligned differentiated EU integration.
Violence against children is a serious problem that society must address as effectively as possible. In Finland, efforts to address violence against children have included strengthening the role of the police in such cases. Since 2015, professionals have been legally required to report suspected child abuse directly to the police, with a reporting threshold that is exceptionally low by international comparison. This article examines national crime statistics from 2009 to 2024 to track the number of cases brought to police attention. It also analyzes how these cases progress and the duration of criminal investigations over the same period. The results show that, although crime reports have increased, the number of cases proceeding to the consideration of charges has not. At the same time, the duration of criminal investigations has steadily lengthened. Our findings suggest that expanding mandatory reporting—particularly without a significant increase in resources for the authorities—does not strengthen children’s legal protection and may, in fact, create bottlenecks in the investigative process.
The paper presents a comprehensive study of the development of penal policy in Serbia over the last 70 years. Yugoslav penal policy was moderate compared to other socialist countries in Eastern Europe; however, profound differences existed among the federal republics. The evolution of Serbian penal policy was marked by significant political events and shifting state priorities. The criminal justice system transitioned from a socialist, rehabilitation-oriented framework rooted in ideological collectivism to a human-rights-centred legal framework, and then to an increasingly punitive approach post-independence. This transition in the criminal justice framework was also reflected in penal statistics, as the number of convictions has steadily decreased throughout the observed period, while the prison population rate has risen more than threefold since 1990. The extensive use of custodial sentences by the judiciary places Serbia among a small group of European countries characterised by a very high prison population rate and a very short average length of imprisonment. The findings highlight the specific development of Serbian penal policy influenced by local political, economic, and normative developments.
This scoping review examines the current landscape of police risk and threat assessment in England and Wales, identifying origin, breadth and scope of application, as well as empirical efficacy. The analysis highlights a strong adherence to core principles of risk and threat assessment, with structured professional judgement (SPJ) approaches being favoured. The most rigorous and empirically validated assessments are found at the individual or typological level, and relate to sexual and violent offenders, domestic abuse, threats to public figures, and indecent image offenders. In contrast, issues are identified in application of dynamic assessments related to decision-making and vulnerability related risk, as well as typological assessments regarding missing persons, police custody, honour-based abuse, anti-social behaviour, and mental health, where frameworks are either absent, new and untested, lack empirical foundations, or are inconsistently applied. At the strategic level, risk and threat governance instruments remain largely unevaluated despite their central role in setting priorities at local and national levels. The discussion highlights the challenge in the trade-off between breadth and depth. Dynamic models seek to raise standards and consistency, while sacrificing the precision often provided by specialist tools, which remain narrowly applied. Finally, recurring issues of repurposing tools across domains and inconsistent human application highlight that the limitations of assessment are not solely technical but also institutional and primarily relate to culture, resources and training.
In public and academic debates on criminal policy, public perceptions of crime seriousness are often presented as an indicator of actual crime seriousness. The relevance of these perceptions for informing policy depends, among other factors, on the extent of societal consensus. However, in the last decades, there have been limited measurements of these perceptions and few studies have explored predictors beyond basic socio-demographic characteristics. Against this background, our study examines the importance of personal values in shaping people’s assessments of crime seriousness. We examine the effects of personal values on perceived crime seriousness itself and its two main dimensions, i.e., perceived wrongfulness and perceived harmfulness. We also consider how such values affect the role wrongfulness and harmfulness play in assessing crime seriousness. Drawing on data from 1,099 residents in Flanders (Belgium), our study indicates that personal values have only limited impact on people’s assessments of crime seriousness. Nonetheless, there are some variations across crimes. Most notably, the conservation values of ‘tradition’ (maintaining and preserving cultural, family, or religious traditions) and ‘conformity-rules’ (compliance with rules, laws, and formal obligations) affect seriousness assessments of drug crimes. Our findings also suggest that, regardless of the values people adhere to, they tend to use the principles of wrongfulness and harmfulness similarly in assessing the seriousness of crimes. With regards to the policy relevance of crime seriousness perceptions, our findings alleviate – at least in the case of Flanders – concerns that such perceptions differ substantially according to people’s values, but they do not eliminate other concerns.
This research presents the development and validation of police assessment forms for the risk of injury, suicide, and homicide in cases of missing persons that are part of the SER-DesVi system. To meet the study objectives, 1,111 cases were analysed, divided into some analytical case groups (injury, suicide and homicide, n = 260) and a control case group (good health, n = 851). A retrospective study was proposed to study the predictive capacity of the system, and a cross-validation model using the K-Fold approach was proposed to study its performance. The analysis strategies focused on studying the ROC curves and the discrimination and calibration parameters. The findings empirically show that SER-DesVi, constructed using a specific set of characteristic indicators, is a useful, valid and effective system for assessing the risk of the missing person suffering injuries or dying by suicide or homicide during the disappearance.
This study examines the relationship between self-reported sexual violence perpetration and victimization experiences in a nationally representative sample of 4,024 Spanish adolescents aged 14–17. Drawing on the victim–offender overlap framework and developmental victimology, the study explores patterns of victimization and polyvictimization among adolescents who reported engaging in sexually violent behaviors during the past year. Results indicate that 4
Preventing and responding to missing incidents is a worldwide challenge, with millions of people reported missing each year. Understanding the characteristics of this population has important implications for informing effective responses. To date, most research primarily originates from UK police samples with limited contributions from European and international countries. This narrow evidence base limits our understanding of whether missing pathways are universal or shaped by country-specific contexts. For countries such as Greece, context may be a particularly important consideration given its unique position as a tourist, commercial, and migratory nexus between Europe and other continents. Accordingly, the present study explores the demographic (gender, age, nationality) and case-related (history of missing episodes, locating outcomes) characteristics of missing people in Greece and whether these characteristics are linked to vulnerabilities and associated factors for going missing. Analysis of Hellenic Police records between January 2021-June 2024 (N = 9,054) highlights that most incidents involve single-episode adult Greek males who were located alive, with adolescents (15–17) comprising the largest single age group. Patterns in the Greek context align with international evidence in adult male predominance, adolescent vulnerability, and mental-health associations. Conversely, they diverge in the disproportionate involvement of children as abduction victims, a comparatively lower repeat episode rate, female over-representation in hospital absconding, and nationality-based vulnerabilities. This highlights the need for careful consideration before assuming universality in the characteristics of those who go missing across countries. Implications for police decision-making and directions for future research are discussed.
Despite the considerable interest, there is little evidence on the suitability of beneficial ownership data for systematic corruption risk assessment. This paper aims to validate common beneficial ownership risk indicators for proxying public procurement corruption. By implication, it offers practical insights for research, policy, and investigations. It also generates hypotheses regarding the impact of beneficial ownership registers on the organisation of financial crime. We match administrative data of 8 million government contracts with 11 million companies’ beneficial ownership records in Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the UK. We estimate fixed effects regressions tailored to capture non-linear relationships between company risk indicators of beneficial ownership and corruption risk indicators of public procurement. Correlations among two sets of differently constructed, yet conceptually related risk factors are interpreted as evidence for measurement validity. We find that BO-based risk indicators capturing unusual and outlier BO features - high company frequency of BO, frequent information change, outlier BO age, and no BO data - all perform in line with expected results. However, BO-based risk indicators relating to BO countries, such as sanctioned jurisdictions, largely fail to relate to public procurement corruption risks in line with expectations. Finally, BO-based risk indicators, which have already been widely validated in the literature using different data sources - company age and political connections - also turn out to be valid. Our findings lend support to the systematic use of beneficial ownership-based risk indicators in research, policy, and investigations. Our new risk assessment tools enable investigators to generate new investigative leads and policymakers to track the scale of likely corrupt transactions in public procurement.
Prison food studies found that communal cooking improves peer support, agency, well-being, and construction of new identities or social status. However, the decision to cook with others, rather than alone, remains an underexplored dimension of prison life. This study fills that gap by examining the extent to which both personal characteristics and prison conditions associate with communal cooking and eating practices, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of the importation and deprivation models. Using data from the Life-in-Custody Study IV and the Food-in-Custody Study IV, with 1,519 participants across all 28 Dutch prison locations, this study provides a first quantitative insight into the communal cooking and eating practices of a large and diverse group of incarcerated individuals. The findings show that several importation and deprivation factors are significantly associated with participation in communal food practices: having a younger age, a national (Dutch) background, more available cooking time, sharing a cell, and satisfaction with one’s own cooked meals. These findings identified which individual characteristics and deprivations associate with (non-)participation of communal cooking, providing policymakers a foundation to develop more opportunities for communal food practices, ensuring everyone has access to its benefits.
Honour-based violence refers to a set of behaviours aimed at preserving or restoring family honour. It constitutes a form of gender-based violence that has gained increasing attention in Europe due to due to migration driven by globalisation. The Istanbul Convention and Directive (EU) 2014/1385 on combating violence against women call for a victim-centred response. To support this approach, it is essential to understand how young Europeans perceive the seriousness of these behaviours and what legal responses they consider appropriate. This study explores these perceptions through a cross-sectional online survey of 3,005 university students enrolled on undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programmes at eight universities in Catalonia (Spain). It examines how socio-demographic, situational and cognitive variables (including gender, religiosity, previous victimisation, and knowledge of HBV manifestations) shape attitudes towards severity, criminalisation and institutional responses. Respondents evaluated three scenarios depicting different HBV manifestations, ranging from forced marriage to controlling behaviours. Descriptive findings show that the majority of respondents perceive these behaviours as serious and criminal, particularly in scenarios involving physical violence or forced marriage. Regression models reveal that knowledge and gender are the strongest predictors of legal perceptions, followed by religiosity and victimisation in some cases. The results suggest that young people prefer victim-centred approaches to punitive measures. These findings enhance understanding of legal perceptions of honour-based violence and offer empirical evidence to support culturally sensitive and legally coherent public policies aligned with international and EU standards.
Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) routinely leverage the capabilities of facial recognition (FR) technology to identify individuals of interest from various image or video sources. Despite its potential, FR technology presents significant challenges and risks that must be carefully considered. These include the possibility of false positive or negative identifications, variations in image quality and resolution, the presence of occlusions or alterations, and the potential for bias or discrimination in the results. Furthermore, the EU AI Act classifies FR technology as a high-risk AI system, subjecting it to stringent requirements and obligations for development and deployment. To effectively manage FR technologies for forensic purposes, LEAs must adopt a risk-based, human-centric and human-in-the-loop approach that balances its potential and limitations within a defined legal framework. This risk-based approach would be a key element in the governance of this technological innovation. This paper proposes a workflow for LEAs utilizing FR technology in forensic applications that includes risk management, which consists of three main stages: 1) forensic FR method preparation, 2) forensic FR method validation, and 3) case-specific application and interpretation. For this workflow, we evaluate the applicability and suitability of different AI model types for FR—ranging from closed boxes to glass boxes, and the in-between middle ground of translucent boxes—combined with likelihood ratios (LRs) used in forensic decision-making processes to obtain trustworthy results. Additionally, recommendations and best practices are provided to assist LEAs in ensuring the validity, reliability, and admissibility of FR technology evidence while adhering to ethical and legal principles.
This study examines how the public assesses blameworthiness and harm in cases of manure pollution where nature, rather than humans or animals, is the primary victim. Although manure-related environmental damage is a longstanding and politically charged issue in the Netherlands, little is known about how lay audiences judge such acts or the conditions that shape these evaluations. Using a balanced experimental vignette design (N = 240), we manipulated farmer intent (intentional versus negligent), severity of ecological damage, recovery time, and the presence of an apology. Respondents rated the farmer’s blameworthiness and reflected on appropriate sanctions through both closed and open-ended questions. Quantitative analyses show that intentional spills are judged significantly more blameworthy than negligent ones, while differences between levels of ecological harm are modest. Age and urbanization independently predict stricter judgments, with younger and urban respondents assigning more blame. Gender effects were absent. Qualitative analyses reveal how respondents negotiate responsibility, often weighing farmer circumstances, regulatory pressures, and perceived governmental response. Views on environmental harm diverged sharply along urban–rural lines, with some rural respondents questioning whether manure is harmful at all. Sanction preferences were highly nuanced: while some endorsed the €20,000 fine, many saw it as excessive, disproportionate, or ineffective, favouring alternatives such as license reviews or community service aimed at environmental restoration. Overall, the findings indicate that public perceptions of environmental crime are more influenced by perceived intent and socio-cultural background than by the severity of ecological damage. The study advances understanding of how people judge wrongdoing when nature itself is positioned as the victim and highlights implications for environmental enforcement, legitimacy, and policy.
