Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I International Criminology
- 1 The Globalization of Crime
- 2 Routine Activities and Transnational Crime
- 3 Migration and Crime
- 4 Political Violence
- 5 Victimology
- 6 Children and International Criminal Justice
- 7 Women and International Criminal Justice
- 8 Culture and Crime
- Part II Law, Punishment, and Crime Control Philosophies of the World
- Part III Transnational Crime
- Part IV Organized Crime and Terrorism
- Part V International crime
- Part VI Delivering International Justice
- Part VII International Cooperation and Criminal Justice
- Part VIII International Research and Crime Statistics
- Part IX International research resources
- World Map
- Index
- References
2 - Routine Activities and Transnational Crime
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I International Criminology
- 1 The Globalization of Crime
- 2 Routine Activities and Transnational Crime
- 3 Migration and Crime
- 4 Political Violence
- 5 Victimology
- 6 Children and International Criminal Justice
- 7 Women and International Criminal Justice
- 8 Culture and Crime
- Part II Law, Punishment, and Crime Control Philosophies of the World
- Part III Transnational Crime
- Part IV Organized Crime and Terrorism
- Part V International crime
- Part VI Delivering International Justice
- Part VII International Cooperation and Criminal Justice
- Part VIII International Research and Crime Statistics
- Part IX International research resources
- World Map
- Index
- References
Summary
OVERVIEW
All crime is local. That statement seems to be brusque and to conflict with the existence of transnational crime. But in this chapter I will defend the statement and show how emphasizing that crime is local helps us understand transnational crime to a greater extent.
Every criminal act can be disaggregated into a sequence of events. If this chain or sequence includes a border crossing, it is easily classified as transnational. But that classification does not tell the whole story. One or more elements in the sequence has to occur locally (see Levi & Reuter, 2006; van Duyne & Levi, 2005). Indeed, all crime requires a local focus of action at some point, perhaps at most points in its sequence. We expect that most transnational crimes include a chain of local actions that outnumber the border-crossing pieces of the chain. Indeed, local people on both sides of a border are usually involved in local aspects of transnational crimes.
This same argument applies to electronic crimes, which have local requirements in virtually all cases, such as unsupervised computers or local cooperation among offenders. Many criminal acts that eventually affect distant locations nonetheless occur initially in a much more limited setting, perhaps with several additional local requirements.
Transnational crimes are important, but they have not replaced or crowded out traditional crimes, such as direct physical theft and violence carried out in more or less the usual ways. That conclusion also misunderstands ways in which electronic crimes have very local requirements. Thus a cyber offender needs access to local computer equipment and local ways to hide identity or evade authority. Nor should we assume that the presence of offenders born abroad proves that crime is transnational, since many of these offenders do ordinary things, such as stealing, evading, confounding, invading, attacking, or confusing others.
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- Information
- International Crime and Justice , pp. 11 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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