The seriousness of crime or ‘crime seriousness’ bears on at least four areas of criminal policy (sentencing, criminalization, crime control and prevention) but is poorly defined. After providing a novel conceptualization of crime seriousness, this article explores the logic – or normative philosophical principles – behind the public’s assessment of crime seriousness and considers how the public’s logic aligns with legal principles and policy requirements. A general population survey administered in 2014 in Belgium and eliciting 1278 valid responses indicates that the public’s logic is more moralist than consequentialist and raises doubts about the validity of public perceptions of crime seriousness as an indicator of crime seriousness for policy-making.

Public perceptions of the seriousness of crime: Weighing the harm and the wrong:

Information technology offers unprecedented opportunities to individuals, businesses and the public sector but also creates new vulnerabilities to crime. Impressive cybercrimes have been reported in the media in recent years, demonstrating the grave harm that even a single cyberattack can cause. Yet no systematic assessment of the impact of cybercrime on Belgian society and economy had been conducted until the start of the research project Belgian Cost of Cybercrime (BCC) in 2013, which was funded by the Belgian Service Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and coordinated by the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), in collaboration with the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC).Building on that large multidisciplinary project, the book assesses the impact of cybercrime on businesses based in Belgium, drawing from a thorough conceptualization of both cybercrime and its impact. Using data collected through two surveys sent to more than 9,000 representatives of Belgian businesses, the authors report that most of the responding businesses are confronted with at least one type of cybercrime every year and some of them suffer serious harm from these incidents. Lastly, the book calls for the identification and implementation of effective preventive measures targeting the different types of cybercrime.

The Impact of Cybercrime on Belgian Businesses

Traditionally policymakers have paid little attention to the consumption of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. Yet, in recent times PIEDs have come to occupy an increasing amount of discursive space and, indeed, regulatory action. This newfound interest may be attributed to several broader developments, not least the perception of the involvement of organized crime in distributing PIEDs to the professional sports world and other sectors of this illicit market. This paper seeks to explore the empirical reality of the claim that the production and supply of PIEDs in Australia is the prerogative of organized crime groups. A retrospective content analysis of Australian PIED provider cases was conducted between 2010 and 2016. To widen our search, both media articles describing court cases, obtained from the Factiva database, and public online court records, using the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) database, were searched. Search terms included “steroid*”, “doping” and “testosterone” in combination with the terms “traffic*”, “production”, “supply*” and “import*”. In total, 477 PIED provider cases were identified yet most cases were duplicates, irrelevant or lacked sufficient detail, resulting in a final dataset of 144 cases. A coding schedule was developed based on existing PIED supply literature. Our data shows that most PIED provider cases took place in Queensland (41.7%), followed by New South Wales (25%) and Victoria (13.2%). Regarding the type of providers, the largest group consisted of people active in the gym industry (22%), followed by the healthcare sector (17%), the ‘other’ category (12%) and the security sphere (8%). Of the 144 steroid-provider cases, only 12% of the cases indicated the potential involvement of organized crime groups, with half of those being linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs. In contrast to the claims of authorities, our data suggests that organized crime groups currently play a proportionally small role in the illicit production and supply of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs in Australia. Indeed, various actors are involved of which only a small fraction are part of or involved with organized crime groups. Many suppliers are particularly active in the gym industry and healthcare sector. The relative presence of such suppliers has important policy implications, not least with regard to the role of criminal law in addressing the provision of PIEDs.

Performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) producers and suppliers: a retrospective content analysis of PIED-provider cases in Australia from 2010-2016

Drug trafficking is frequently argued to be the leading driver of other serious and organised crime, but the interrelationships between such activities remain poorly understood. This paper uses ope...

Exploring interrelationships between high-level drug trafficking and other serious and organised crime: an Australian study

The substantial improvements in development information and communication technologies led many economic and non-economic implications for the countries and in turn motivated the researchers to que...

ICT development and shadow economy: Empirical evidence from the EU transition economies

In recent years the term “serious crime” has gained prominence in EU policy on internal security. This article analyzes how the EU policy and scientific communities have conceptualized and operationalized the term. Through a content analysis, it evaluates the articulation and use of “serious crime” in EU policy documents published from 1995–2013 and scientific articles published from 2004–13 that include the term (n = 93 and n = 104, respectively). The analysis demonstrates deficits of conceptualization and operationalization and a correspondingly weak foundation for policy. While the EU’s increasing emphasis on serious crime could represent an opportunity to improve the accountability of EU crime control policies, it is up to academics and policy-makers to address these deficits.

Mieke Conickx

Papers

Exploring Definitions of Serious Crime in EU Policy Documents and Academic Publications: A Content Analysis and Policy Implications

Shouldn't We Be Serious About Serious Crime?