Search Results (147)

Environmental crime has been increasingly recognised as transnational organised crime, but efforts to build a coherent and effective international response are still in development and under threat from shifts in the funding landscape. This mixed methods study addresses the role of one significant group of actors in environmental crime enforcement, which are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who gather intelligence that can be shared with law enforcement and regulatory agencies. The study compares their intelligence practices to findings from traditional intelligence sectors, with a focus upon criminal justice and policing. The research generated quantitative and qualitative data from NGO practitioners, which is integrated to discern three overarching themes inherent in these NGOs’ intelligence practices: the implementation of formal intelligence practices is still underway in the sector; there remains a need to improve cooperation to break down silos between agencies and NGOs, which requires an improvement in trust between these entities; the operating environment provides both opportunities and challenges to the abilities of the NGOs to deliver impact. The study concludes by positing that the characteristics of NGOs mean that this situation constitutes ‘green intelligence’, contextualising intelligence theory and highlighting areas in which agencies can further combat environmental crime. Full article

As the demand for more accurate crime prediction and risk assessment grows, researchers have been developing smarter models that blend statistical methods with machine learning. This study compares a hybrid ARIMA-ANN model with traditional classification techniques to see which best forecast monthly crime risk levels in Galați County, Romania. The analysis is based on a newly compiled dataset of 132 monthly observations from January 2014 to December 2024, which combines a broad array of social, economic, and environmental data points. The main variable, ‘Crime risk’, is based on normalized counts of offenses per capita and divided into five balanced levels: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. The hybrid ARIMA-ANN model merges the strengths of statistical time series analysis with the flexible learning ability of artificial neural networks. Performance is evaluated against multinomial logistic regression, decision trees, random forests, and support vector machines. Overall, the results show that an ARIMA-ANN model consistently outperforms traditional methods, especially in recognizing patterns over time, seasonal trends, and complex nonlinear relationships in crime data. This study not only sets a new benchmark for crime analytics in Romania but also offers a flexible, scalable framework for classifying crime risk levels across different regions. Full article

Narcotics trafficking is a fundamental part of organized crime, posing significant and evolving challenges for forensic investigations. Addressing these challenges requires rapid, precise, and scientifically validated analytical methods for reliable identification of illicit substances. Over the past five years, forensic drug testing has advanced considerably, improving detection of traditional drugs—such as tetrahydrocannabinol, cocaine, heroin, amphetamine-type stimulants, and lysergic acid diethylamide—as well as emerging new psychoactive substances (NPS), including synthetic cannabinoids (e.g., 5F-MDMB-PICA), cathinones (e.g., α-PVP), potent opioids (e.g., carfentanil), designer psychedelics (e.g., 25I-NBOMe), benzodiazepines (e.g., flualprazolam), and dissociatives (e.g., 3-HO-PCP). Current technologies include colorimetric assays, ambient ionization mass spectrometry, and chromatographic methods coupled with various detectors, all enhancing accuracy and precision. Vibrational spectroscopy techniques, like Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, have become essential for non-destructive identification. Additionally, new sensors with disposable electrodes and miniaturized transducers allow ultrasensitive on-site detection of drugs and metabolites. Advanced chemometric algorithms extract maximum information from complex data, enabling faster and more reliable identifications. An important emerging trend is the adoption of green analytical methods—including direct analysis, solvent-free extraction, miniaturized instruments, and eco-friendly chromatographic processes—that reduce environmental impact without sacrificing performance. This review provides a comprehensive overview of innovations over the last five years in forensic drug analysis based on the ScienceDirect database and highlights technological trends shaping the future of forensic toxicology. Full article

Lack of green spaces, citizen insecurity, and crime are the primary issues afflicting the Pueblo Libre district. This research aims to propose public spaces that revalue the cultural and historical landscape of Pueblo Libre. The methodology involves a literature review, urban analysis, and climate analysis, incorporating sustainability strategies supported by digital tools (AutoCAD, Revit, and Sketch-Up). The resulting design features an ecological park with vegetation capable of capturing carbon and emitting oxygen, absorbing up to 3544.99 kg of CO₂ annually. It also includes installing 26 solar-powered lights to illuminate necessary spaces efficiently and using eco-friendly materials. Additionally, the park incorporates an artificial wetland with a capacity to process 38,500 L of water using plants that remove toxic elements and capture nutrients. In conclusion, the ecological park seeks to revalue the cultural landscape and counteract environmental degradation by creating a green lung that purifies the air, fosters social connectivity, and integrates users with nature, enhancing their quality of life. Full article

The emphasis on collaborative governance and effective leadership to bring any social change is gaining prominence among researchers. This study investigates how leadership and collaborative governance can drive social change in waste management in Campania, using a qualitative, multi-site case study approach. Interviews of relevant politicians, public managers, citizens, waste management organizations and academics were conducted (2023–2024). This research uses the lens of multiple theoretical frameworks such as collaborative governance, network agency, public value framework and transformational leadership to explore different dynamics of the research such as stakeholder engagement, public value creation and leadership effectiveness in waste management. Moreover, several obstacles in the way of achieving social change in Campania concerning waste management and environmental sustainability are identified. The findings of this study added to the theoretical understanding of collaborative governance and social change through the demonstration of how transformational leadership, stakeholder participation and trust-based relationships drive good waste management while identifying structural limitations such as corruption and organized crime that hindered governance. Practically, it highlights five interconnected themes from interviews of leadership that civic leaders and managers must establish to promote positive social change: Difficulties in leadership effectiveness, civic potential unused, media mobilization, hope for a miracle and stakeholder engagement diversification. The public value framework is used to analyze the potential role of leadership in bringing change in society. The research findings are replicable and can be applied to a similar set of circumstances. This study advances existing research by addressing the gap in understanding how collaborative governance and transformational leadership can be integrated to tackle waste management and environmental sustainability challenges. The findings can be applied to other regions facing similar governance challenges, making it relevant for global sustainability efforts. Italy’s government has green-lighted projects to make these activities more visible while downplaying their negative impacts on the environment and public health. Full article

Recreational hunting is a highly regulated activity, in part because it can give rise to a variety of deleterious social, environmental, and economic harms. It provides an interesting area for those interested in community safety because of the way in which both formal (e.g., enforcement officers, proscribed areas and times for hunting, licensing, etc.) and informal (e.g., community awareness and education, conservation) methods of crime prevention are applied. And yet, the criminological literature on effective regulation is not only limited but diverse in terms of scope, types of behavior considered (e.g., poaching, wildlife trading, recreation, etc.), and the context that is considered (e.g., geographical, cultural, etc.). In this paper, we present how a crime prevention and compliance response can be used to understand the nature of the issue and the individual and socio-political processes that result in non-compliance with hunting regulations. We present an overview of the status of recreational hunting in an Australian jurisdiction and locate the regulatory issues that arise within the research literature that explores the various motivations that are known to drive illegal hunting. These are then considered in relation to how community-oriented and non-coercive measures might be employed to improve prevent criminal behavior at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Full article

Understanding the complexity of urban systems remains a significant challenge for researchers and practitioners in urban planning and governance. Cities function as multifaceted systems composed of interconnected subsystems with nonlinear interactions, making the design of effective interventions to enhance sustainability and liveability particularly challenging. Spatial modelling has gained prominence in recent decades, fuelled by advances in digital technologies and the advent of digital twins as decision support tools. To fully harness these innovations, it is essential to grasp their underlying principles, strengths, and limitations, and to select the most suitable modelling approach for specific applications. This paper examines two contrasting spatial modelling paradigms: top-down and bottom-up. Specifically, it focuses on Space Syntax and Agent-Based Modelling as representative tools of each approach, analyzing their potential applications in urban planning. This discussion delves into the effectiveness of the proposed methodologies in analyzing crime dynamics—selected as a representative application field—at the micro-urban scale. It highlights the insights each approach offers, emphasizing their contributions to understanding the spatial and environmental factors influencing crime patterns. Finally, this paper explores the potential for integrating these methodologies to develop hybrid models that capture both spatial structure and emergent behaviours, offering enhanced support for sustainable urban policies and planning. Full article

In 21st-century American cities, urban crime remains a critical public safety concern influenced by complex social, political, and environmental structures. Crime is not randomly distributed and built-environment characteristics, such as street network configuration, impact criminal activity through spatial dependence effects at multiple scales. This study investigates the cross-sectional, multi-scale spatial effects of street network configuration on property crime across neighborhoods in Charlotte, North Carolina. Specifically, we examine whether the fundamental characteristics of a neighborhood’s street network contribute to variations in its property crime. Using a novel and granular spatial approach, incorporating spatial econometric models (SAR, CAR, and GWR), several street network characteristics, including density, connectivity, and centrality, within five nested buffer bands are measured to capture both local and non-local influences. The results provide strong and consistent evidence that certain characteristics of the neighborhood street network, such as connectivity and accessibility, significantly influence the occurrence of property crime. Impacts are also found to be spatially heterogenous, manifesting themselves at the mid-range scale rather than hyper-locally. The integration of comprehensive measures of street network configuration into spatially explicit models offers new opportunities for advancement in environmental criminology literature. Such spatial dynamics further contribute to urban safety policy by informing decision-makers so that they can ensure a defensively built environment design. Full article

The progress in automotive technology, communication protocols, and embedded systems has propelled the development of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). In this system, each vehicle acts as a sophisticated sensing platform that collects environmental and vehicular data. These data assist drivers and infrastructure engineers in improving navigation safety, pollution control, and traffic management. Digital artefacts stored within vehicles can serve as critical evidence in road crime investigations. Given the interconnected and autonomous nature of intelligent vehicles, the effective identification of road crimes and the secure collection and preservation of evidence from these vehicles are essential for the successful implementation of the IoV ecosystem. Traditional digital forensics has primarily focused on in-vehicle investigations. This paper addresses the challenges of extending artefact identification to an IoV framework and introduces the Collaborative Forensic Platform for Electronic Artefacts (CFPEA). The CFPEA framework implements a collaborative forensic-by-design mechanism that is designed to securely collect, store, and share artefacts from the IoV environment. It enables individuals and groups to manage artefacts collected by their intelligent vehicles and store them in a non-proprietary format. This approach allows crime investigators and law enforcement agencies to gain access to real-time and highly relevant road crime artefacts that have been previously unknown to them or out of their reach, while enabling vehicle owners to monetise the use of their sensed artefacts. The CFPEA framework assists in identifying pertinent roadside units and evaluating their datasets, enabling the autonomous extraction of evidence for ongoing investigations. Leveraging CFPEA for artefact collection in road crime cases offers significant benefits for solving crimes and conducting thorough investigations. Full article

Background: Accurately determining the post mortem interval (PMI) is critical in forensic investigations to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to and following death. Traditional methods (e.g., observing livor mortis, rigor mortis, and using temperature-based models) have limitations due to their empirical nature and susceptibility to environmental variables. The objective of this study was to assess the potential of a novel portable device, the Fisic Medimate™ system, for estimating PMI through the analysis of the potassium/sodium (K+/Na+) ratio in vitreous humor. Method: Vitreous humor samples were collected from pigs at various intervals up to 44.5 hours post-mortem. These samples were analyzed using the Fisic Medimate™ system to determine the K+/Na+ ratio. The analysis was conducted at different time points to establish a relationship between the K+/Na+ ratio and PMI. Results: The results indicated a log-linear relationship between the K+/Na+ ratio and PMI for periods up to 31 hours, with normal residuals. This relationship was observed across all samples, suggesting that the method provides reliable and consistent data. Conclusions: This method offers a rapid and portable solution for PMI determination, providing valuable data within minutes directly at the crime scene. While these findings suggest potential for on-site forensic applications, further validation under real-world conditions is required to confirm its broader applicability. Full article

Background: In forensic investigations, the postmortem interval (PMI) is still mainly determined using pathological analysis. There have been many scientific efforts to identify alternative methods of PMI determination, which may be applied to future forensic practices. Methods: Considering the ethical implications and the availability of tissue samples for PMI experiments, we used human blood samples stored at three temperatures to mimic different environmental conditions, testing them over a period of 10 days post-sampling. These samples were biochemically tested for specific blood biomarkers, glucose (Glu) and lactic acid (Lac), to determine their potential as PMI biomarkers. Then, a mixed-effect mathematical model was applied to the data related to time- and temperature-dependent concentration changes of both biomarkers followed by additional computer-simulated models to refine the PMI estimates based on each of the biomarker concentration changes. Results: Herein, we present this alternative method of PMI estimation based on the biochemical testing of blood samples that could potentially be collected at a crime scene using biochemical blood biomarkers Glu and Lac, which are mathematically modelled and refined with time- and temperature concentration changes. Conclusions: While there is still much forensic science required to validate any alternative PMI methods, this study shows that there are other cross-disciplinary methods of PMI determination that warrant further exploration. Full article

Built environment and physical activity (PA) studies have predominantly used fixed or home-centric approaches to identify environmental exposures. In this study, GPS-derived daily activity spaces were used to examine the relationships between the built environment and sedentary behavior (SB), light PA (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). Thirty-one adults were assessed with activity monitors and GPS units. Three types of activity spaces were created: 50 m buffered GPS tracks, minimum convex hulls (MCHs), and standard deviational ellipses (SDEs). The environmental variables included land use mix, greenness, and intersection, multi-use trail, bike infrastructure, and bike station densities. Repeated measures regression was used to test the associations for 141 person-days, controlling for age, gender, income, body mass index, crime, precipitation, and temperature. Greenness within MCH activity spaces was positively associated with LPA (p = 0.02). The bike infrastructure density within SDE spaces had a significant positive association with MVPA (p = 0.04). Multi-use trail, bike infrastructure, and bike station densities had significant negative associations with LPA (p ≤ 0.05). There were no significant adjusted associations with SB. The few significant associations in this study varied by outcome and type of activity space. Further studies are needed to determine optimal, yet flexible methods for activity spaces in built environment and PA research. Full article

This paper critically examines Brazil’s legislative framework for pesticide waste management, highlighting recent advancements and persistent challenges. The introduction of Law 14785/2023 marks a pivotal shift in pesticide regulation, streamlining registration processes and enhancing safety measures. This law consolidates various aspects of pesticide management, from research to disposal, aiming for more efficient oversight. Complementary to this, foundational laws such as the Federal Constitution (1988), Law 6938/1981 (National Environmental Policy), Law 12651/2012 (New Forest Code), and Law 13123/2015 (Biodiversity Law) establish broad guidelines for environmental protection and the sustainable use of resources. Specific regulations, including the Environmental Crimes Act (Law 9605/1998) and CONAMA Resolutions No. 465/2014 and No. 420/2009, address critical aspects of pesticide waste, focusing on proper disposal and soil quality management. Despite these advancements, challenges persist in the effective implementation of these laws. Inadequate monitoring systems and limited stakeholder awareness hinder regulatory enforcement. Strategic recommendations to address these issues include enhancing monitoring technologies, strengthening educational initiatives, fostering stakeholder collaboration, and adapting legislation to keep pace with technological advancements. A robust pesticide waste management system is essential for ensuring long-term sustainability in agricultural production. Inefficient disposal practices can contaminate soil and water, posing risks to biodiversity and public health. By reinforcing regulatory enforcement and integrating sustainable waste management strategies, Brazil can mitigate the environmental impact of pesticide use while promoting safer agricultural practices. The ongoing evolution of legislation reflects a commitment to sustainability; however, continuous efforts are necessary to fully realize these goals and align agricultural development with environmental conservation. Full article

Sexual violence among school-aged girls is a global health problem. Research has shown that school-aged girls experience high rates of sexual violence that often go unreported. In Kenya, one in three girls experiences sexual violence before the age of 18. Sexual violence against girls can prevent them from safely attending school and cause health issues that affect school performance. This qualitative study explored community and environmental factors associated with sexual violence against school-aged girls in Kitui County, Kenya. A total of 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with key stakeholders from Kitui South Sub County. The stakeholders were from six sectors, including the police, health, education, community, religious, and criminal justice sectors. The data were analyzed using conventional content analysis to gain an understanding of the stakeholder’s perspectives and knowledge relating to sexual violence against school-aged girls. Stakeholders frequently identified the criminal justice system, culture and traditional beliefs, and threats to well-being as barriers to reporting sexual violence offenses. Girls who experience sexual violence often contend with shame from the community, and the effects of stigma include loss of resources, additional violence, poorer marriage prospects, unplanned pregnancies, school dropouts, or abandonment. Perpetrators often threatened or bribed the families of girls who experienced sexual violence with gifts or monetary incentives to prevent them from reporting the crime to local authorities, while the criminal justice system itself presents numerous challenges for victims. The reporting of sexual violence could be increased by focusing on intervention strategies that challenge attitudes, norms, and behaviors rooted in gender inequality. By addressing the underlying causes of stigma and inequality, we can create a safer environment for school-aged girls to report sexual violence and seek justice. Full article

Creating and sustaining safe, healthy urban environments requires active collaboration between residents and local governments. Public safety and the upkeep of public spaces depend, in a large part, on residents’ reports of crime and service needs. However, in underserved areas, factors such as urban decay, inadequate public services, and concentrated disadvantage have weakened these cooperative dynamics. This breakdown can exacerbate the underreporting of crime and service needs and deepen neighborhood inequalities. In Buffalo, NY, the city-led initiative “Clean Sweeps” works to reduce neighborhood disparities through rapid beautification and community outreach in targeted city blocks. The program aims to improve quality of life by reducing crime and blight while fostering greater community engagement. In an analysis of data from 77,955 matched properties (published elsewhere), we found that residents were more likely to report drug-related crimes (via 911) and blight-related service needs (via 311) compared to untreated properties in the 6 months following the Clean Sweep. In this study, we analyze data from 21 interviews with city staff and four focus groups with residents to explore how interventions in the social and physical environment of neighborhoods, like the Clean Sweep innovation, can influence residents’ willingness to coproduce with local government. We identify improved responsiveness, trust, and self-efficacy as key mechanisms impacting residents’ reporting behavior. The findings show how relatively simple environmental interventions paired with outreach can help create safer, healthier neighborhoods. Full article