By Alana Cook

Over the past two decades, there has been a long-term decline in motor vehicle theft. Stolen vehicle numbers reached an historic low in September 2021 following two COVID-19 lockdowns, steadily increasing since then. In March 2023 the number of vehicles stolen in NSW was higher than any month in the previous six years and increased 21.3% year-on-year. This paper considers the increase in motor vehicle theft up to March 2023 focusing on where the increase is most pronounced, which vehicles are affected, and who appears to be responsible. Key features of the recent increase in incidents of motor vehicle theft include: • The increase in vehicle theft is not uniform across NSW. In a number of regional locations vehicle theft has shown strong growth and is now much higher than at any point in previous five years. This applies to New England and North-West, Richmond-Tweed, Far West and Orana, Mid North Coast, and Central West. In New England and North West, for instance, vehicle theft was 67% higher in the year to March 2023 compared with five years earlier and the number of vehicles stolen in March 2023 (n=91) was the highest since records began in 1995. • This contrasts with the pattern of vehicle theft in other parts of NSW, particularly Greater Sydney, where the volume of vehicles stolen still remains lower than prior to the pandemic. In these locations, increases seem to simply reflect recovery from the COVID-related crime fall. • Vehicles stolen in Regional NSW are more likely to be recovered than vehicles stolen in Greater Sydney. This suggests motor vehicle theft in regional locations may be more likely to be conducted opportunistically for joyriding and transport purposes. • Young people appear to be responsible for the increase in vehicle theft in Regional NSW with a 179% increase in legal actions against this group over the five years to March 2023. A significant, but smaller increase in young people proceeded against in Greater Sydney was also observed (up 52%). • Theft patterns vary by vehicle make and year of manufacture. In the year to March 2023: š The most frequently stolen vehicles were manufactured by Toyota, Holden, and Ford, all of which are very common vehicles. š The vehicle makes with the highest rate of theft were Holdens, Jeeps, and Land Rovers. š Common vehicle makes with the largest percentage increase in theft in the five years to March 2023 were Kias, Jeeps, Isuzus, Land Rovers, and Volkswagens. š Older vehicles are much more susceptible to theft than recent models. • The recent increase in vehicle theft is at least partially a bounce-back from the COVID-driven crime declines of 2020 and 2021 as pandemic restrictions eased. Another factor, however, particularly in certain regional communities, may be associated with reports of social media posts encouraging vehicle theft on the platform TikTok. 

(Bureau Brief No. 166). 

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research 2023. 11p

By Michael Townsley & Benjamin Hutchins Griffith Criminology Institute

This Study is the second overview produced by the Profit Protection Future Forum into the ANZ retail crime landscape.

The 2022 Australia and New Zealand Retail Crime Study is the second overview produced by the Profit Protection Future Forum into the ANZ retail crime landscape.

The first study (published in 2019) provided needed regionally relevant intelligence into hot products, popular offending methods, and sector-level estimates of loss types.

This second study not only continues this focus and considers changes during the intervening period. As everyone is aware, the last four years have witnessed considerable and unpredictable changes. COVID-19 disruptions, staff shortages, strained supply chains, and greater online transaction volumes have all shaped the opportunity surface for the commission of criminal activity, be it organised retail crime groups or impulsive amateurs.

Profit Protection (AUS) and Washington, DC: National Retail Federation, 2023. 35p.

By Alana Cook

As with many property crimes, incidents of retail theft fell significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since October 2021, however, retail theft offences have been steadily increasing, up 47.5% year-on-year to June 2023. This paper considers the increase in retail theft up to June 2023 focusing on the regions where retail theft is increasing, what items is being stolen and from where, and who appears to be responsible. Findings show: • The sharp increase in retail theft following the removal of pandemic related restrictions has brought retail theft volumes back to equivalence with pre-pandemic figures in both Greater Sydney and Regional NSW. The absence of an increase in theft reports beyond what was reported prior to the pandemic suggests the upward trend reflects a return to pre-pandemic offending levels. The trend does not support emerging external factors, such as the cost-of-living crisis, driving an increase in this offence. • The most frequently reported stolen item in retail theft is liquor, including bourbon, whiskey, and vodka (stolen in 37% of incidents), followed by clothing (22%). Retail theft of personal items, such as perfume and cosmetics, has declined in the past five years (stolen in 13% of incidents). • Locations recording the biggest increase in steal from retail incidents over the past five years are licenced premises and general wholesalers. Department or clothing stores and chemists have reported the largest decreases. • $440 was the average value of items stolen in retail theft incidents in 2022/23. • Almost half of all retail theft offenders are aged 30 to 39 years but after accounting for population, young people aged 14 to 17 years had the highest rate of involvement with NSW Police.

(Bureau Brief No. 168). 

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research 2023. 10p.

By Adam Teperski and Stewart Boiteux

AIM To examine whether longer apprehended domestic violence orders (ADVO) are associated with changes in domestic violence (DV) offending and ADVO breaches. METHOD A dataset of 13,717 defendants who were placed on an ADVO after a DV incident between January 2016 and April 2018 was extracted from the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics and Research’s ADVO database. This included 10,820 defendants subject to a final 12-month order, and 2,897 defendants subject to a final 24-month order. We utilised an entropy balancing matching approach to ensure groups of defendants subjected to differing ADVO lengths were comparable and implemented an event study analysis to examine quarterly differences in offending outcomes in the three years after the start of the order. In doing so, we were able to examine relative differences in offending in the first 12 months (where both groups were subject to an ADVO), the second 12 months (where only the 24-month ADVO group were subject to an ADVO), and the third 12 months (where neither group were subject to an ADVO). RESULTS In the 12 to 24 month period, where ADVOs with a longer duration were active and shorter ADVOs were not, longer ADVOs were associated with increased breach offending and decreased DV offending. Specifically, in the 5th, 6th and 7th quarters after the beginning of a final order we observed 3.4 percentage points (p.p.), 4.1 p.p., and 2.3 p.p. increases in defendants breaching their ADVO, respectively. When considering baseline rates of breaching, this represents relative increases of 79% to 161%. In the 5th, 6th, and 7th quarters after the beginning of a finalised order, longer ADVOs were associated with respective 1.8 p.p., 2.0 p.p., and 3.1 p.p. decreases in DV offending, reflecting relative decreases in DV offending by 41% to 59%. We find no group differences in DV offending or breaches in the subsequent 12 months, when ADVOs for both groups had expired. While the study examined multiple factors related to both longer ADVO length and offending, we cannot exclude the possibility that unobserved factors may be influencing our results. CONCLUSION Relative to 12-month ADVOs, 24-month ADVOs were associated with an increase in the probability that an offender breaches the conditions of their ADVO, and a decrease in the probability that an offender commits a proven DV offence.

(Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 261). 

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research., 2023. 34p.

By  Ziyang Lyua, Suzanne Poyntonb and Scott A. Sissona

AIM To quantify the effects of individual liquor licensing policies introduced in New South Wales (NSW) over the last decade on rates of violent crime. METHOD: The effects of individual state-wide policies on non-domestic assaults in NSW and additional local policies in the Sydney Central Business District Entertainment Precinct (CBD) and the Kings Cross Entertainment Precinct (KCP) from 2000 to 2019 were quantified using time series intervention models. We used a vector auto regression (VAR) model to create counterfactual datasets. These datasets were derived from proxy data outside the study area and helped predict potential assault outcomes without the policy implementation. RESULTS: The liquor licensing policies introduced by the NSW Government between 2008 and 2018 contributed to a significant decline in non-domestic assaults, both in Sydney and across NSW. By the end of 2019, non-domestic assaults had reduced by an estimated 19% in NSW, 45% in the Sydney CBD, and 84% in the KCP. Policies restricting late night (or 24-hour) trading of licensed premises and those targeting enforcement toward the highest risk venues contributed most to these declines. CONCLUSION: This research adds to the mounting evidence that restricting trading hours can substantially reduce the risks associated with acute alcohol intoxication and can be a cost-effective crime reduction strategy when combined with enforcement that targets the small number of premises that account for most of the harm.

(Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 263). 

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. , 2023. 27p.

By Michael J. Frith  , Kate J. Bowers  , Shane D. Johnson 

Introduction: In response to COVID-19, governments imposed various restrictions on movement and activities. According to the routine activity perspective, these should alter where crime occurs. For burglary, greater household occupancy should increase guardianship against residential burglaries, particularly during the day considering factors such as working from home. Conversely, there should be less eyes on the street to protect against non-residential burglaries. Methods: In this paper, we test these expectations using a spatio-temporal model with crime and Google Community Mobility data. Results: As expected, burglary declined during the pandemic and restrictions. Different types of burglary were, however, affected differently but largely consistent with theoretical expectation. Residential and attempted residential burglaries both decreased significantly. This was particularly the case during the day for completed residential burglaries. Moreover, while changes were coincident with the timing and relaxation of restrictions, they were better explained by fluctuations in household occupancy. However, while there were significant decreases in non-residential and attempted non-residential burglary, these did not appear to be related to changes to activity patterns, but rather the lockdown phase. Conclusions: From a theoretical perspective, the results generally provide further support for routine activity perspective. From a practical perspective, they suggest considerations for anticipating future burglary trends 

Journal of Criminal Justice, v. 82, 2022

By Nanzi Zheng, Karen M. Abram,  Leah J. Welty; et alDavid A

Importance  Youths, especially Black and Hispanic males, are disproportionately affected by firearm violence. Yet, no epidemiologic studies have examined the incidence rates of nonfatal firearm injury and firearm mortality in those who may be at greatest risk—youths who have been involved with the juvenile justice system.

Objectives  To examine nonfatal firearm injury and firearm mortality in youths involved with the juvenile justice system and to compare incidence rates of firearm mortality with the general population.

Design, Setting, and Participants  The Northwestern Juvenile Project is a 25-year prospective longitudinal cohort study of 1829 youths after juvenile detention in Chicago, Illinois. Youths were randomly sampled by strata (sex, race and ethnicity, age, and legal status [juvenile or adult court]) at intake from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Participants were interviewed at baseline (November 1995 to June 1998) and reinterviewed as many as 13 times over 16 years, through February 2015. Official records on mortality were collected through December 2020. Data analysis was conducted from November 2018 to August 2022.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Participants self-reported nonfatal firearm injuries. Firearm deaths were identified from county and state records and collateral reports. Data on firearm deaths in the general population were obtained from the Illinois Department of Public Health. Population counts were obtained from the US census.

Results  The baseline sample of 1829 participants included 1172 (64.1%) males and 657 (35.9%) females; 1005 (54.9%) Black, 524 (28.6%) Hispanic, 296 (16.2%) non-Hispanic White, and 4 (0.2%) from other racial and ethnic groups (mean [SD] age, 14.9 [1.4] years). Sixteen years after detention, more than one-quarter of Black (156 of 575 [27.1%]) and Hispanic (103 of 387 [26.6%]) males had been injured or killed by firearms. Males had 13.6 (95% CI, 8.6-21.6) times the rate of firearm injury or mortality than females. Twenty-five years after the study began, 88 participants (4.8%) had been killed by a firearm. Compared with the Cook County general population, most demographic groups in the sample had significantly higher rates of firearm mortality (eg, rate ratio for males, 2.8; 95% CI, 2.0-3.9; for females: 6.5; 95% CI, 3.0-14.1; for Black males, 2.5; 95% CI, 1.7-3.7; for Hispanic males, 9.6; 95% CI, 6.2-15.0; for non-Hispanic White males, 23.0; 95% CI, 11.7-45.5).

Conclusions and Relevance  This is the first study to examine the incidence of nonfatal firearm injury and firearm mortality in youths who have been involved with the juvenile justice system. Reducing firearm injury and mortality in high-risk youths and young adults requires a multidisciplinary approach involving legal professionals, health care professionals, educators, street outreach workers, and public health researchers.

JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(4):e238902. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.8902

By John Aloysius, Ankur Arora, Viswanath Venkatesh

Purpose: Retailers are implementing technology-enabled mobile checkout processes in their stores to improve service quality, decrease labor costs and gain operational efficiency. These new checkout processes have increased customer convenience primarily by providing them autonomy in sales transactions in that store employee interventions play a reduced role. However, this autonomy has the unintended consequence of altering the checks and balances inherent in a traditional employee-assisted checkout process. Retailers, already grappling with shoplifting, with an estimated annual cost of billions of dollars, fear that the problem may be exacerbated by mobile checkout and concomitant customer autonomy. The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of mobile checkout processes in retail stores on cybercrime in the form of shoplifting enabled by a technology transformed the retail environment. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an online survey of a US sample recruited from a crowdsourced platform. The authors test a research model that aims to understand the factors that influence the intention to shoplift in three different mobile checkout settings − namely, smartphone checkout settings, store-provided mobile device checkout settings, and employee-assisted mobile checkout settings − and compare it with a traditional fixed location checkout setting. Findings: The authors found that, in a smartphone checkout setting, intention to shoplift was driven by experiential beliefs and peer influence, and experiential beliefs and peer influence had a stronger effect for prospective shoplifters when compared to experienced shoplifters; in a store-provided mobile devices checkout setting, experiential beliefs had a negative effect on shoplifters’ intention to shoplift and the effect was weaker for prospective shoplifters when compared to experienced shoplifters. The results also indicated that in an employee-assisted mobile checkout setting, intention to shoplift was driven by experiential beliefs and peer influence, and experiential beliefs had a stronger effect for prospective shoplifters when compared to experienced shoplifters. Originality/value: This study is the among the first, if not first, to examine shoplifters’ intention to shoplift in mobile checkout settings. We provide insights into how those who may not have considered shoplifting in less favorable criminogenic settings may change their behavior due to the autonomy provided by mobile checkout settings and also provide an understanding of the shoplifting intention for both prospective and experienced shoplifters in different mobile checkout settings.

Information Technology and People, April 2019, 32(5):1234-1261

By  Anna Sergi

This project involved qualitative primary research into criminality within seaports, by observing how ports, as microcosmic realities run through formal and informal relationships and have specific security vulnerabilities, which facilitate different types of illegal or deviant behaviours. Research has been carried out in two European ports (Liverpool and Genoa) and three non-European ones (Montreal, New York and Melbourne), which are either targets of, or transit zones for, criminal activities and criminal networks.  The main aim of this comparative research project was to improve policy understanding of how the complex relationships within ports act as conduits or facilitators in how criminal networks operate in the territory of and around the ports. With specific attention to the changing geopolitical conditions surrounding the port of Liverpool within the Brexit scenario, the study has looked at what could be learned in the British experience from international ones both in terms of security and in terms of transnational risk assessments. 

London: University of Essex, 2020.    230p.

By Yongjae (David) Nam, Travis Carter, Scott Wolfe, Allison Rojek, Spencer G. Lawson

The City of Saginaw (MI) was financially crippled by the lengthy national recession and steady
deterioration of the domestic automobile industry. Once home to five automobile production
plants, four of those sites now sit uninhabited. Several other major manufacturers have closed
plants or drastically reduced the number of employees. These losses dramatically increased
unemployment and devastated the city’s tax base. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
unemployment in Saginaw peaked in July 2009, standing at 23.5%. The 2018 American Community
Survey indicates that the unemployment rate for Saginaw was 14.9%. This rate is higher compared
to a national unemployment rate of 5.9% and a rate of 6.5% for Michigan. The 2010 Census reports
that Saginaw’s median household income was $29,809 and per capita income was a mere $16,153,
both nearly half the state of Michigan and U.S. averages. About 33.6% of the total population lives
below the poverty line, more than double the state of Michigan average (14.2%) and nearly triple
the U.S. average (12.3%). Census reports show the population of Saginaw decreased by nearly
13,000 people (20.7%) from 2000 to 2018 (from 61,799 to 48,997 people). Saginaw’s population
decline, deteriorating property values, shrinking income tax collections, and drastically reduced
state revenue sharing continue to severely impact the city’s ability to provide basic public services,
creating quality of life issues and high violent crime rates. Despite a high incidence of crime, poor
economic conditions forced the city to make the inevitable decision to reduce the size of its police
department from 160 police officers in 1997 to its current level of 54 officers (66.3% decrease).
From 2016 to 2018, 42 homicides were committed in Saginaw. Most were committed with a
firearm, and more than three-fourths were drug and/or gang-related. Additionally, there were
another 138 victims of non-fatal shootings. In 2018, Saginaw’s violent crime rate per 100,000
residents (1,621) was more than four times the national average (381) and more than three times
Michigan’s average (449). In addition, Saginaw’s homicide rate (22.8) was over four times both the
national average (5.0) and Michigan’s average (5.5). Moreover, data reveal that Saginaw's overall
crime rates are 64% higher than Michigan’s average and are 34% higher than the nation's average.
The Saginaw Violent Gang and Gun Crime Reduction Program (hereafter, Saginaw PSN) was
aimed at addressing these problems. Table 1 provides an overview of the goals, objectives, and
outcomes of the Saginaw PSN program

East Lansing, MI: School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University., 2022. 53p.

By Mélanie S.S. Seabrook, Alex Luscombe, Nicole Balian, Aisha Lofters, Flora I. Matheson, Braden G. O’neill, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Navindra Persaud, Andrew D. Pinto

This longitudinal study found no consistent correlations between increased police spending and municipal crime rates.

The analysis found that police services are a top budget priority in most municipalities, with up to 26 percent of total expenditures allocated to police. However, the findings revealed net increases in per capita spending are not associated with larger reductions in crime rates.

The authors examined budgets of 20 urban municipalities in Canada: Toronto, Montreal, Peel Region, Calgary, York Region, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Waterloo Region, Surrey, Quebec City, Hamilton, Halifax, Laval, London, Gatineau, Saskatoon, Burnaby, and Longueuil.

The study looked at police funding and how it varies across Canadian municipalities over a long period of time. The data from 2010 to 2020 showed wide differences in spending. For example, Vancouver spent more than double per capita on policing in 2019 than Quebec City, highlighting the complexity of the interactions between crime rates and police funding.

Other studies have also had mixed results regarding the relationship between police funding and crime. A A 2014 found no clear relationship between crime rates and per capita police expenditures in Canadian provinces, and a 2015 studyof 50 Canadian municipalities found that higher spending on police was associated with higher rates of violent crime, but the direction of the relationship was not established.

Research on police funding is limited in Canada, partly due to the lack of publicly available data on police spending. The study calls for improved publishing of police expenditure data, and for future research to examine whether funding decisions may be based on past crime rates and explore whether investments in police impact future crime rates.

Although the authors do not make specific policy recommendations regarding police budgets, the findings raise questions about the reasoning for such vast differences in police funding across the country despite overall downward crime rates.

Canadian Public Policy, Volume 49 Issue 4, December 2023, pp. pp. 383-398

By Kristen M. Budd 

Report examines misconceptions around crimes of a sexual nature that contribute to the rise in imprisonment rates and the lengthening of sentences, and offers recommendations for reform.  

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 14p.

By Brendan O'Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi

Crime and policing activities routinely involve interactions between strangers and require the interacting parties to make highly consequential decisions under time pressure. Under such conditions, stereotypes based on visual or other cues can influence behavior. This review considers the role of stereotypes in shaping the manner in which such interactions proceed and the likelihood with which they occur in the first place. Our focus is primarily on robbery, murder, police stops and searches, and the use of deadly force, but the arguments apply more generally. We also consider how stereotypes can become entrenched through the behavioral changes they induce, given large differences across offenses in rate of arrest and prison admission.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 383 - 401

By Philip J. Cook and Ashley Mancik

In 1962, the FBI reported a national homicide clearance rate of 93%. That rate dropped 29 points by 1994. This Great Decline has been studied and accepted as a real phenomenon but remains mysterious, as does the period of relative stability that followed. The decline was shared across regions and all city sizes but differed greatly among categories defined by victim race and weapon type. Gun homicides with Black victims accounted for most of the decline. We review the evidence on several possible explanations for the national decline, including those pertaining to case mix, investigation resources, and citizen cooperation. Our preferred explanation includes an upward trend in the standard for arrest, with strong evidence that although clearance-by-arrest rates declined, the likelihood of conviction and prison sentence actually increased. That result has obvious implications for the history of policing practice and for the validity of the usual clearance rate as a police performance measure.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 59 - 83

By Yiying Wang

This Paper Is Dedicated To The Completion Of A Visual Urban Report On Safety In Informal Settlements. This Research Explores The History Of Apartheid In South Africa And Investigates How Urban Development Processes Within Informal Settlements Contribute To The Development Of Unsafe Neighbourhoods. Cape Town And The Largest Of These Slums, Khayelitsha, Were Selected As Macro And Micro Cases. Also The Barrio Ciudad Project In Honduras Was Analysed In This Study As A Best Practice Case Study. This Provides Insight Into How Design And Non-Design Measures Can Be Used To Address Insecurity In Informal Settlements.

2022 5th International Conference on Economy Development and Social Sciences Research (EDSSR 2022) 7p.

By Harsha Moraliyage; Vidura Sumanasena; Daswin De Silva; Rashmika Nawaratne; Lina Sun; Damminda Alahakoon

The dark web has been confronted with a significant increase in the number and variety of onion services of illegitimate and criminal intent. Anonymity, encryption, and the technical complexity of the Tor network are key challenges in detecting, disabling, and regulating such services. Instead of tracking an operational location, cyber threat intelligence can become more proactive by utilizing recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect and classify onion services based on the content, as well as provide an interpretation of the classification outcome. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal classification approach based on explainable deep learning that classifies onion services based on the image and text content of each site. A Convolutional Neural Network with Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) and a pre-trained word embedding with Bahdanau additive attention are the core capabilities of this approach that classify and contextualize the representative features of an onion service. We demonstrate the superior classification accuracy of this approach as well as the role of explainability in decision-making that collectively enables proactive cyber threat intelligence in the dark web. 

IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 56044-56056, 2022,

By Saiba Nazah; Shamsul Huda; Jemal Abawajy; Mohammad Mehedi Hassan

The Dark Web is one of the most challenging and untraceable mediums adopted by the cyber criminals, terrorists, and state-sponsored spies to fulfil their illicit motives. Cyber-crimes happening inside the Dark Web are like real world crimes. However, the sheer size, unpredictable ecosystem and anonymity provided by the Dark Web services are the essential confrontations to trace the criminals. To discover the potential solutions towards cyber-crimes evaluating the sailing Dark Web crime threats is a crucial step. In this paper, we will appraise the Dark Web by analysing the crimes with their consequences and enforced methods as well as future manoeuvres to lessen the crime threats. We used Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method with the aspiration to provide the direction and aspect of emerging crime threats in the Dark Web for the researchers and specialist in Cyber security field. For this SLR 65 most relevant articles from leading electronic databases were selected for data extraction and synthesis to answer our predefined research questions. The result of this systematic literature review provides (i) comprehensive knowledge on the growing crimes proceeding with Dark Web (ii) assessing the social, economic and ethical impacts of the cyber-crimes happening inside the Dark Web and (iii) analysing the challenges, established techniques and methods to locate the criminals and their drawbacks. Our study reveals that more in depth researches are required to identify criminals in the Dark Web with new prominent way, the crypto markets and Dark Web discussion forums analysis is crucial for forensic investigations, the anonymity provided by Dark Web services can be used as a weapon to catch the criminals and digital evidences should be analysed and processed in a way that follows the law enforcement to make the seizure of the criminals and shutting down the illicit sites in the Dark Web. 

 IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 171796-171819, 2020, 

Javeriah Saleem, Rafiqul Islam and Muhammad Ashad Kabir   

The dark web is a section of the Internet that is not accessible to search engines and requires an anonymizing browser called Tor. Its hidden network and anonymity pave the way for illegal activities and help cybercriminals to execute well-planned, coordinated, and malicious cyberattacks. Cyber security experts agree that online criminal activities are increasing exponentially, and they are also becoming more rampant and intensified. These illegal cyber activities include various destructive crimes that may target a single person or a whole nation, for example, data breaches, ransomware attacks, black markets, mafias, and terrorist attacks. So, maintaining data privacy and secrecy is the new dilemma of the era. This paper has extensively reviewed various attacks and attack patterns commonly applied in the dark web. We have also classified these attacks in our unique trilogies classification system. Furthermore, a detailed overview of existing threat detection techniques and their limitations is discussed for anonymity providing services like Tor, I2P, and Freenet. Finally, the paper has identified significant weaknesses that make the dark web vulnerable to different attacks.

 IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 33628-33660, 2022

By Abhineet Gupta 

The internet can broadly be divided into three parts: surface, deep and dark among which the latter offers anonymity to its users and hosts. The dark web has become notorious in the media for being a hidden part of the web where all manner of illegal activities take place. The more restrictions placed upon the free exchange of information, goods and services between people the more likely there exist hidden spaces for it to take place. The ‘black market’ of the internet – the dark web - represents such a hidden space. This review looks at the purposes it is widely used for with an emphasis on cybercrime, and how the law enforcement plays the role of its adversary. The review describes these hidden spaces, sheds light on their history, the activities that they harbour – including cybercrime, the nature of attention they receive, and methodologies employed by law enforcement in an attempt to defeat their purpose. More importantly, it is argued that these spaces should be considered a phenomenon and not an isolated occurrence to be taken as merely a natural consequence of technology. The review is conducted by looking at existing literature in academic journal databases. It contributes to the area of the dark web by serving as a reference document and by proposing a research agenda.  

Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2018.  46p.

By Richard Rosenfeld and Ernesto Lopez:   National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice

This study is the fifth in a series of reports exploring pandemic-related crime changes for the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice. Updating that earlier work, this analysis reveals both increases and decreases in crime rates in a sample of United States cities during the first quarter of 2021 compared with the first quarter of 2020. Homicides, aggravated and gun assaults, and motor vehicle thefts increased, while residential burglaries, nonresidential burglaries, larcenies, and drug offenses fell. The timing of the declines in burglaries, larcenies, and drug crimes coincided with the stay-at-home mandates and business closings that occurred in response to the pandemic. Quarantines reduced residential burglary. When businesses are closed, there is no shoplifting. Selling drugs on the street is more difficult when there are fewer people on the street, and drug arrests fall when police reduce drug enforcement because they have prioritized other activities. Our findings show that there was a 26% increase in motor vehicle thefts in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in the previous year, even as other property crimes declined. Motor vehicle thefts may have risen during the pandemic as more people left their vehicles unattended at home rather than in secure parking facilities at work.  

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2021.