New Trends in Societal Security research in the Nordic countries 26-27 November 2014 in Stockholm

2. Outline
• Partnership on Crime, Conflict and Security
– Conflict
– Cybersecurity
– Organized Crime
• My GULF
– Leadership activities
– Research

3. Thematic Content

5. Themes and lead Research Councils
Conflict

6. External Champion
• http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/projects/external
-champion-rcuk-GU/

7. “Impact” and Interdisciplinarity
• Impact might be thought to favour STEM
subjects working without AHRC/ESRC
• Humanities/Social Science collaborations have
very modest interdisciplinarity, in my opinion;
difficulties of communicating across
borderline with STEM subjects
• Ethics research has high impact, and lends
itself to work with STEM subjects

8. My GULF website
• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/rese
arch/ierg/globaluncertainties/home/
• Interactions with GU-funded projects
• High-Impact events
• Liaison with Europe TNOC research through
SURVEILLE project
• Academic research

9. Serious Crime
• Seriousness a criterion of appropriate severity of
punishment
• Seriousness of crime C a criterion of whether
attempts at C and conspiracies to commit C, and
assisting in the commission of C should be
criminalized
• Seriousness a criterion of whether surveillance,
and, in English law, prevention orders, against
potential committers of C can be authorized

10. Serious Crime Act 2007 and
new Bill (2014)
• Authorizes Serious Crime Prevention Orders
for various offences
• A Bill now before Parliament extends the list
of offences eligible for SCPOs
• Controversial whether SCPOs in general
morally justified
• Lists of offences are arguably miscellaneous

11. Threshold for criminalization
• Act is wrong
• There is a public interest in preventing it
• A penalty for committing that type of act can
be threatened in legislation
• The threatening legislation expresses public
interest through censure
• There are resources for enforcing the law

12. Serious crimes
Significantly exceed the threshold for criminalization:
1. Act in question very wrong (typically very wrong because very
harmful)
2. Strong public interest in preventing just in virtue of (1)
3. Legislation assigns a penalty reflecting (1) while co-ordinating
that penalty with penalties for other offences
4. There is a willingness in a legislature to fund prevention and
prosecution of offence

13. Seriousness as actually (not nec ideally)
captured in (Eng) law
• Tracks kind and degree of harm
• Tracks vulnerability
• Tracks culpability
• Tracks number of victims
• Tracks number of perpetrators
• Tracks co-ordination of perpetrators
• Tracks financial rewards
– Crime shouldn’t pay
– Big financial rewards a means of becoming more effective
(money-making without punishment) and manufacturing
de facto impunity

14. Sample offences
• Terrorism
• Drug trafficking
• Fire-arms importation
• Sexual abuse of children
• Domestic abuse
• In England, breaching a civil order to refrain from
persistent, targeted, verbal abuse

15. Von Hirsch and Jareborg
• Crime serious when it
– Victimizes
– Inflicts serious harm
– Involves aggravating factors (see slide 6):

16. The Problem
• The Von Hirsch and Jareborg conceptualization
of serious crime comes with limitations
– “Crimes against the community” are excluded
– Crimes involving disputed victim status do not work
very well
• A framework which extends von Hirsch and
Jareborg

17. Crimes included by von Hirsch and
Jareborg
• Wounding
• Murder

18. Crimes excluded
• Perjury
• Counterfeiting
• Money Laundering
• Some kinds of theft
• Abuse of public office
• Tax evasion
• Some kinds of fraud

19. Uncertain
• Drug trafficking
• Prostitution

20. Intuitive solution
• Crimes not just one-off transactions between
individuals
• Some harm results from impeding harm-reducing
institutions, both legal institutions
and regulated, licit economic markets

21. Elaboration
• A crime is serious if its intention contradicts the purpose or frustrates the
conduct of an institution designed to reduce harm
Harm reducing institutions include well-functioning courts, prisons, police
forces
• [A crime is serious if it is criminalized and in committing it knowingly
participates in a system/an institution which incorporates victimizing
crime;
• A system incorporates victimizing crime if participants deliberately and
regularly resort to victimizing crime in order to realize economic gains or
extend their control and territory
• A violent illicit market incorporates victimizing crime
• Drug trafficking occurs within a violent illicit market
• Drug trafficking frustrates the conduct of a regulated market in drugs
• A regulated market in drugs is a harm-reducing institution]

22. Harm-reducing institutions
• Police services
• Courts
• Prisons
• Rescue services
• Regulated markets
• Unemployment services
• Housing services
• Regulatory authorities