Cyber-slavery converges human trafficking and transnational cybercrime by coercing trafficked individuals into cyber-enabled fraud through confinement, violence, surveillance, and control. This study uses a hybrid qualitative and administrative data design. It combines a systematic narrative review with preanonymized law-enforcement metadata on 29,466 Indian nationals identified as probable cyber-slavery cases in Southeast Asia between 2022 and 2024. From these sources, we develop a five-tier victimization framework that conceptualizes cyber-slavery as a layered sociotechnical process with probabilistic transitions a exploitation and its aftermath. Tiers 1-3 capture recruitment, coercion, and sustained exploitation. Tiers 4-5 capture postexploitation harms, including reintegration barriers, criminalization, and persistent incriminating digital traces. Cases show substantial male predominance (21,182 males; 8,283 females) and concentration among those aged 20-39. The wider cybercrime ecosystem included 633,000 Indian SIM cards and 376,000 mule accounts. Thailand emerged as a major transit hub, accounting for 20,450 cases. Prolonged exposure to coercive cybercrime environments may also facilitate transitions from forced participation to voluntary criminal involvement, complicating victim-offender distinctions and legal accountability. The study calls for trafficking-aware cybercrime investigations and reforms that recognize forced criminality within digitally mediated transnational crime ecosystems.
Minor offences, for example, street and traffic offences, constitute the vast majority of legal offences that police encounter. In deciding how to deal with these sorts of offences, the use of discretion is pivotal, given that full law enforcement is operationally impractical and counterproductive in terms of welfare objectives and police legitimacy. Yet the ubiquitousness of discretion and the minor nature of these offences often serve to hide the complex and at times problematic nature of discretionary decisions. This article presents a conceptual critique of police discretion in the context of addressing occurrences of minor offences to clarify the challenges faced by street-level police when using discretion in this context. By elaborating a continuum of responses available to police in the Australian jurisdiction of New South Wales, this article reveals the complexity of these decisions within the organisational, ethical and contextual factors that influence them. Drawing on contemporary Australian and international examples and informed by the theory of street-level bureaucracy, the discussion highlights problematic aspects for police in applying discretion fairly, whilst considering the underlying factors and potential responses to these issues. This article contributes a clearer conceptual understanding of how police negotiate the challenges of using discretion when dealing with minor offences and the implications for improved legitimacy, equity and reform.
This article investigates how the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) have managed to maintain close criminal justice cooperation after Brexit, despite the UK's uneven integration with the EU, best described through the frame of differentiated integration (DI). While much attention is often given to the UK's various opt-outs in this field, the argument here is that the UK, prior to Brexit, shifted from a selective participant to becoming a more engaged partner that actively collaborated within EU judicial frameworks, recognizing the concrete benefits of joint legal and procedural work. The study shows that professionals on both sides not only advocated for retaining as many mechanisms as possible, but also diligently applied the agreed measures and addressed emerging challenges collaboratively. A conceptual discussion illustrates that in this domain, the UK represented a case of aligned DI, where constructivist influences and functional demands fostered deeper convergence with the EU, which persisted beyond its formal membership. The perseverance of judicial cooperation is thus not accidental but reflects a strategic recalibration by the UK, making EU disintegration difficult while fostering its external differentiated (re-)integration.
