Distribution by Region

Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year

Crime occurs mostly in documents published in Europe, followed by Africa, North America, MENA and Asia with comparatively smaller contributions. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are IGO, NGO, State, RC and NGO_Fed organisations.

IGO documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from activity reports published in Europe. Occurrences from NGO were mostly obtained from activity reports published in MENA.

State documents mostly generated occurrences in activity reports published in North America. Occurrences from RC were mostly found in activity reports published in Europe. Lastly, occurrences from NGO_Fed were obtained from activity reports published in North America.

Crime...

• is a/an

• offence

• problem

• event/behaviour

• strategy

• dynamic condition

• risky socioeconomic process

• is categorised by

  • nature

• • scale

• • gravity

• • location

• • perpetrator

• • status

• has many types and subtypes, especially relevant to humanitarians being

  • war crimes

• • crimes against humanity

• • organised crime

• • transnational crime

• • international crime

• • violent crime

• • hate crime

• • property crime

    • non-violent, violent

    • lesser: fraud, vandalism, graffiti, damage to property

    • serious: burglary, larceny, theft, arson

  • urban crime

  • Israeli crimes

• has victims, especially

  • civilians, Palestinians, journalists, children, women

• has root causes, which are

  • varied & context-dependent

  • debated

  • identified with studies and/or theoretical stances

  • mostly traced to income inequality, e.g.

    • flawed development approaches

    • unjust arrangements

    • chronic hunger

• is addressed by organisations via

  • youth outreach

• • advocacy

• • training & assistance

• building relationships

• knowledge production

• has specific reduction strategies

  • citizen security & social inclusion

  • social crime prevention

  • broad-based responses

  • environmental design

  • partnerships between sectors

  • global arms trade treaties

• has contested or unclear definitions for types & subtypes

  • war crime

  • organised vs. street gang crime

  • violence against women

  • crime as a donor-defined concept

• is unaddressed for various reasons

  • perpetrators have impunity

  • IHL offers only theoretical protection

  • slow war crimes case resolution

  • challenges documenting hate crimes

  • humanitarian work being criminalised

• exists within humanitarian organisations

  • e.g., corruption

A crime is fundamentally defined as an antisocial act that violates a law and for which a punishment can be imposed by the state or in the state’s name; the resulting range of punishable acts is extraordinary and varies across jurisdictions and cultures. Within this context, crime prevention approaches and classification schemes have focused on offenders, on punishment, on policing, on corrections, on victims, and on sociological, cultural and economic contexts of the criminal event. These emphases have produced an extensive literature12 of prevention strategies relative to addressing offenders’ moral, psychological, economic and social conditions, devising police tactics, assessing the efficacy of prisons and correctional systems, remedying urban slums and addressing physical and management issues relative to urban planning and design.

But there seems to be a general agreement that crime and violence in Papua New Guinea are caused by five main factors – namely, a general lack of economic opportunities; the drive to acquire material wealth; the inability of law enforcement institutions to address criminal behaviour in the city effectively; a general decline of traditional cultural practices that assist with conflict resolutions and the maintenance of law and order; and the abuse of the wantok system and the impact of urbanization – wantok literally means 'people who speak your language'.

Unlike the due process model, the social justice model is a powerful critique of existing social arrangements as they affect crime and punishment. The social justice approach assumes that crime is caused, in large part, by unjust social arrangements and unequal power relations.

Studies have shown that income inequality – which is highest in Africa and Latin America – is much more strongly associated with violent crime than poverty.

Exclusionary and jobless growth and, especially, high rates of youth unemployment, coupled with unrealistic expectations and high levels of inequality, tend to result in high rates of crime, including violent crime. Particular countries may thus deviate from the general pattern or average effect of the impact of growth rates on crime rates or crime patterns. The relationship is policy and context sensitive. High rates of violent crime and gender violence may be regarded as the outcome of a wrong approach to development that marginalizes large sections of the population.

Chronically hungry people are more likely to riot, clash with other groups or migrate to urban centres, straining their infrastructure and causing crime .

The chart below represents the distribution of crime between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.

A key message of the report is that Caribbean countries need to focus on a model of security based on the human development approach, whereby citizen security is paramount, rather than on the traditional state security model, whereby the protection of the state is the chief aim. Indeed, the contrast between prevention on the one hand and repression and coercion on the other is ill conceived. Social inclusion to help prevent crime and violence and efficient and effective law enforcement are by no means incompatible or mutually exclusive. In a truly democratic society, broad based social inclusion and swift criminal justice–or “prevention” and “coercion”—serve to reinforce and complement each other. This is one of the most important lessons to be taken from this report – and not only for the Caribbean but for all of Latin America as well.

Likewise, the outcomes in terms of crime reduction have no apparent association with expenditure. The expenditure of Trinidad and Tobago on security is relatively high, but the country's serious crime rate remains high. Financial investment is not a sufficient condition for crime reduction. Much depends on the mix of policies, the public support for the policies and the capacity to implement the policies effectively. The right mix of policies means rebalancing policy to give appropriate emphasis to social crime prevention.

There is often substantial confusion and debate over the terms street gang and organized crime. The difference between the two is important, however, not only for diagnosing the related issues accurately, but also for the implementation of effective and efficient responses.

The most important policy trend in the field over the past two decades or so has been the move away from the idea that crime prevention and tackling violence are essentially matters for the police and the criminal justice system, and towards the idea that these are complex phenomena which require broad-based responses.

Thus, land-use juxtapositions, street layouts, building and site design, transportation system planning, infrastructure improvements – especially lighting and facility and landscape maintenance, as well as activity and space scheduling – have been shown to have variable impacts on crime opportunity and on the subsequent incidence and fear of crime.157 The lack of integration of crime prevention strategies within comprehensive city planning practices has been cited as a factor in facilitating opportunities for urban crime.158 Physical planning can make a difference in terms of crime prevention/reduction, to more effective policing, to informal surveillance and to the protection of persons and property.

The complexity of the causes and types of crime shows that policies and programmes aimed at addressing crime and violence in Port Moresby should foster a strong partnership between the government, NGOS and the community. The international community also has a key role to play in providing better training and equipment, and in supporting partnership approaches.

At an ICRC-organized workshop, parliamentarians began drafting a bill to amend the penal code; the definition of war crime – specifically, whether it should include abuses committed during non-international armed conflict – remained under discussion.

The longer such a conflict lasts, the more we observe a downward spiral of war crimes, retribution, hate and inhumanity on all sides.” In addition, this is aggravated by the public staging of war crimes. “Armed groups deliberately carry out their crimes against humanity and try to be highly visible in order to foster the impression that international humanitarian law is irrelevant.”

[....]

However, the world has so far not found a way to overcome the gap between the reality in conflict zones and the theoretical protection by international humanitarian law.

In mid-2012, the US walked away from an arms trade treaty in the 11th hour. We assessed what had gone wrong, refined our approach, and helped bring the US around. Just over eight months later, the world’s first international arms trade treaty was passed. Our objective Oxfam sought an international arms trade treaty (ATT). A robust and effective ATT would establish international standards to ban all arms transfers that could facilitate genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes.

The fight against impunity for the most serious international crimes such as war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity continues unabated. It is encouraging to note that an increasing number of local judges and prosecutors – thanks to our trainings and interventions – are convinced that impunity is unacceptable and that victims are entitled to redress.

Grave concerns, however, exist about the implementation of national war crimes strategies. This is especially the case with respect to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the deadline for completing the prosecution of complex war crimes cases had to be extended by three years (to the end of 2018), and where barely any progress has been made in processing cases based on investigative materials transferred by the Tribunal five years ago. In addition, improved regional inter-State cooperation is needed with respect to establishing accountability for wartime atrocities.

She also underlined that while the international community shares a collective responsibility to prevent genocide, individual States have a primary role and a higher stake in putting a stop to the crime .

In conclusion, it is important that adequate control systems are in place in order to reduce risks of corruption and mismanagement of resources. NCA is committed to combating corruption in our work. However, in order to fight financial crime it is crucial that humanitarian organisations and their donors cooperate towards achieving the same results.

Because most countries have not established mechanisms to identify perpetrators or victims of hate crime, it is difficult to know how extensive the problem is or where to target resources to combat it.

Forwarding rights through the courts CCR was active in several cases before the courts, including as an intervener in an important series of cases at the Supreme Court dealing with the definition of human smuggling. The CCR argued that it should not be a crime for people acting on humanitarian motives to help refugees find asylum from persecution.

The anti-gang law and Supreme Court declaration describing gangs as terrorist groups also hampered partners’ work on violence prevention (if gangs are deemed terrorists, partners that work on rehabilitating former gang leaders or work with gangs on violence prevention would be taking actions considered illegal).

The term "sexual harassment" is understood internationally as the abuse of authority by persons in positions of power with the purpose of coercing persons under their authority into granting sexual favours. In general, Arab penal codes contain no concrete definition of the crime of sexual harassment.

For example, a Palestinian feminist initiative, the Committee for Resisting Women's Killing, has demanded the use of the term qatl al-nisa (femicide) so as to counter the legitimization and justification of these crimes and to respond to the reliance on the term "honour crime" by the Israeli authorities to promote the idea that such Young violence originates in Palestinian and Arab culture.

The lens offers a flexible and unified framework for thinking about the context-specific drivers, risk factors, protective factors and effects. It is also unconstrained by preconceived assumptions regarding donor-imposed categories such as “conflict”, “crime” or “fragile”.

Many of them become victims of trafficking, child pornography and other social crimes and illegal activities.