Although there is a growing volume of research on various kinds of fraud, relatively little has been written about insurance fraud. Even fewer studies have been undertaken on the prevention of insurance fraud. This study aims to fill this gap. It focuses not on large-scale corporate fraud but on individuals ‘fiddling’ their home, motor and travel policies. During the course of this study, the researcher surveyed the public and found that insurance fraud is commonplace, and committed by people of different classes— often unwittingly, and rarely with much regret. Insurance companies were surveyed, and data collected by interviews with insurance staff. It emerged that many insurers did not realise they had an insurance fraud problem, and those that did were either doing little to prevent it or were using ineffective methods. Insurance fraudsters are often given a great deal of help, often by officials who abuse the trust placed in them; insurers’ relationship with the police and with loss adjusters is not geared to stopping fraudsters, and insurance fraud is thus rendered easier. To illustrate this, and with the help of an insurance company, the researcher conducted a mock insurance fraud, and found it easy to commit. This study shows that insurance fraud is mostly an opportunistic crime. Within the study of crime prevention there is an approach which seeks to reduce the number of offences by curtailing the opportunities for crime. This is known as ‘situational crime prevention’, and is based on the ‘rational choice perspective’. Professor Ron Clarke, whose name is most closely associated with the approach, has called for more research to apply the principles and techniques of opportunity reduction to a range of crime types. This thesis represents an attempt to do this in relation to insurance fraud, and in so doing to stimulate ideas on how insurance fraud can be tackled effectively. In addition, it offers a new perspective on the situational approach and the techniques of opportunity reduction, plus a revised classification of these techniques. At the same time it offers a critique of the situational approach itself. The findings suggest that if fraud within the insurance industry is to be taken seriously then there are a range of structural concerns that need to be tackled, and that this moves beyond the scope of situational prevention.

This thesis examines whether identity theft is an offence in Barbados, England or Australia and, more fundamentally, considers if the criminalisation of the misconduct is justified by reference to the normative theories of harm and morality. The study is a doctrinal and theoretical one that draws on primary and secondary legal materials. Comparative examination of laws of relevance to identity-related misconduct are not new but this is the first involving these three countries, each of which presents a unique feature. More importantly, the thesis contributes to the literature on the special part of the criminal law by commencing detailed normative inquiry into the criminalisation of identity theft. Adopting a conceptualisation based on its folk origins, identity theft is taken to mean the assumption of another’s identity through the use of that person’s personal identification information. The study focuses on the harm which may arise from that core act as distinct from that which may be consequential on conduct facilitated by, or associated with, it. An examination of relevant offences in the countries of choice leads to the conclusion that the misconduct is not a criminal offence. Additionally, the study rejects the practice of sentencing courts in treating identity theft as an aggravating factor as an inadequate denunciation of the misconduct and a breach of the principle of fair labelling. This necessitates the normative enquiry which includes considerations of objectification, ethically grey conduct, human dignity, consent and remote harm. With respect to the latter, the thesis offers a conceptualisation of the role of identity theft in facilitating wrongdoing. The study establishes a prima facie case for criminalisation based on morality, the risk of harm to direct victims and harm to the societal interest in identification.

This thesis examines property crime in the city of Bristol, in south-west England, between 1770 and 1800. It uses documents produced by the city’s magistrates, and the records of its civic administration, to study the locations and socio-cultural contexts of theft. There are several arguments which weave through this material. Firstly, it is argued that the city was a location of distinctive social structures and institutions, which shaped the ways that crime occurred. It considers the circulation of stolen goods and the manner in which the city was policed, particularly in relation to the impact that this had on offenders’ behaviour. Secondly, this thesis argues that the nature of theft was highly contingent on its context. The ways in which thefts from houses, ships, alehouses and shops were mutually distinctive are illustrated. The chapters on alehouses and stolen goods markets also attempt to evaluate the importance of social connections to acts of crime, and to consider the place of crime within plebeian culture. The study of crime can, therefore, be a lens through which we can examine the economic and social life of the pre-modern city. Furthermore, it is not just thieves who are the focus of study in this thesis: victims’ responses to crime, and the extent to which crime was an important factor in the organisation of their everyday lives, are issues which are critically considered. Finally, this thesis aims to provide a study of provincial crime which can be compared to previous historians’ studies of other places such as London. While this inevitably produces a story in which there are both continuities and differences, it is ultimately argued that the notion of ‘the city’ presents a useful category for the analysis of crime.

One of the lowest prosecuted crimes in western civilisation is arson. Defence ‘experts’ may be able to discredit a prosecution charge by demonstrating that there are alternative causes for the fire that their defendant was being accused of setting, which were not investigated thoroughly, nor disproved. Unlike many other crimes, a fire may not be detected as arson until the final stages of an investigation, whereas with most other crimes, there is an obvious victim of a crime in the early stages of an investigation. The investigation of fires can be extremely complex. Fire investigators need to ensure that they have conducted their investigation using a systematic and rigorous methodology so that their findings can with-stand any challenges. At the beginning of this project, it was identified that there was a fundamental lack of a systematic methodology to investigate the cause of fires and a need for one to be developed. To address this need, a series of 23 Fire Investigation Road Maps (FIRMs) have been designed, developed and tested at real fire scenes and also during cold case fire investigation reviews to assist a competent fire investigator conduct a thorough, rigorous and systematic investigation to determine the origin and cause of a fire. It is the cause of the fire, that being the ignition source, first combustible material to become ignited and the mechanism that brought the two together which will determine whether the fire was started accidentally or deliberately. The FIRMs are based on the application of the Scientific Method and are divided into groups and categories to ensure a rigorous and thorough process is carried out during an investigation. Some examples of applications of the FIRMs during fire investigations when working with the police, forensic scientists and insurance investigators are the Bethnal Green Road two fire fighter fatalities; ‘Operation Refit’, reviewing the murder of Wayne Trotter; the Iron Mountain data storage depot in East London and the fire in the high rise flats, Lakanal, where six occupants lost their lives. The outcomes of these examples, and many other fire investigations, when applying the FIRMs have demonstrated to the relevant authorities, including several Coroners, that a complete and accurate fire investigation has been conducted. Utilising the FIRMs during a fire investigation will benefit society by enabling existing data to be gathered, documented, analysed and made available for many interested parties, such as Coroners, civil and criminal prosecutors or used to identify any fire safety issues which need addressing. The accurate identification of the cause of a fire, with supporting forensic evidence, will assist the courts in making decisions as to whether the fire was accidental, deliberate or the result of a design or system failure. In the circumstances of deliberate fires, the FIRMs will support any subsequent prosecutions and help increase the low arson prosecution rates that currently exist.

Profiles are knowledge constructs that represent and identify a data subject. While not a new phenomenon, the use of profiling has exploded and its ubiquity is likely to increase, as a result of the widespread adoption of monitoring technology. The literature on profile development tends to refer to the practice, the technique or the technology of profiling, separately. Little has been written on how the perspectives interact with each other and, ultimately, shape the emerging behaviour profile. In order to map out the elements that impact on behaviour profiling, this thesis uses organisational semiotics, enhanced with classification theory, for key constructs. The study views profilers as agents who interpret and act on available information according to particular sets of technical, formal and informal factors and who, in the presence of incomplete or ambiguous stimuli, may fill in or distort information. Furthermore, the thesis examines how the position of the interpreter in the profiling process influences the result of the exercise. A case study conducted in a British financial institution demonstrates how technical systems and profilers acting in particular contexts influence each other in a dialectical process, whereby the characteristics of the data available impact the analysts' ability to interpret an event and, at the same time, the analysts tend to look for in the data only what they consider conceivable. The discussion centres on the influence of the type of stimuli available, the relational context and the actions of individual profilers in shaping the emerging meaning, in the context of financial crime detection. In addition, it considers the role of technical, formal and informal systems to overcome eventual variances in meaning. The thesis extends the applicability of organisational semiotics with classification theory. Inspired by models of sequential encounters, the thesis provides a methodological contribution by developing a tool for the analysis of sequential meaning making processes. A practical contribution emerges from mapping the impact of the profilers' perceptions into the emerging profile, and by suggesting mechanisms for shaping those perceptions.

This dissertation constitutes a systems theoretical analysis of Anti-Money Laundering that dismisses the projected ideals of holism and delves into the core of Systems Theory (ST) in the tradition of second-order cybernetics. This theoretical approach of ST is appropriated in order to describe the domain of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) as a system in itself and at the same time examine the consequences that technology comes to play within the system of AML. While the contemporary phenomenon of AML has been reduced mostly into a set of technological consequences from profiling technologies (technologies that attempt within financial institutions to model and simulate money-laundering behaviour for the generation of suspicious transactions), this dissertation takes a different approach. Instead of focusing at profiling technologies that are believed to be the core technological artefacts that influence AML within financial institutions, this dissertation examines a variety of information systems and their interplay and describes through empirical findings the multitude of interactions that are technologically supported and that construct a much more complex picture of dealing with AML and thereby influencing how money-laundering is perceived. The empirical findings supporting the theoretical treatise come from a longitudinal case study of a Greek financial institution where a systematic examination takes place regarding a variety of information systems that may affect AML within the bank. Beyond isolated interferences of information systems to AML, their interrelations are further examined in order to reflect on the emergent complexity that often distorts cause-and-effect AML manipulations. The theoretical contributions put forward, constitute a systems theoretical application and an expansion of technological/systemic interferences, while the practical contributions to AML cover broader systems-theoretical reflections on the domain, technological integration within financial institutions for targeting ML, feedback relations between financial institutions and Financial Intelligence Units, as well as the systemic consequences for the newly implemented risk-based approach.

Economic crime is an important feature of the United Kingdom’s economy and yet it attracts less attention from the media, government and law enforcement agencies than violent crime, even though it is a major drain on the economy, it threatens the reputation of corporations and it poses a threat to national security. This thesis considers the economic crime components – fraud, bribery and corruption, and financial regulation, taking as the starting position the UK government’s analysis of the prosecution of fraud and regulation of financial services in the 1980’s. In strident terms, these were criticised for an ineffective approach towards the prosecution of fraud and the lack of an adequate system of financial regulation. This thesis critiques the development of government policy, legislation and anti-economic crime institutions over the succeeding 35 years by examining the field of economic crime as a whole, rather than as traditionally looking individually at its component parts. This approach is placed in sharp relief by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent revelations of conspiracies and fraud and the differencing approaches of separate institutions which serve to emphasise the lack of a cohesive approach. Economic crime is a global phenomenon and although the UK, geographically, is an island in economic terms it is linked to other countries which have to face the same issues. This presented the research opportunity to consider how two other countries, the United States of America and Australia, coped with the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath and whether an analysis of their approaches would provide a beneficial template for the UK to adopt. The conclusion of this thesis is that the Coalition government was correct in its ideal to hold those suspected of financial wrongdoing to account in a day of reckoning, but that this was doomed to failure because the anti-economic crime forces are competitors rather than colleagues. This thesis proposes creation of a cohesive and effective anti-economic crime policy and creation of a single Economic Crime Agency, to encompass existing agencies to remove areas of overlap and underlap and enabling the single agency to deploy criminal and regulatory powers and sanctions.

Over the last decade, levels of domestic burglary in Leeds have been amongst the highest in the UK. This has led to substantial investment into reducing burglary in the city; for example, with the implementation of the Burglary Reduction Programme in 2011. Though burglary levels in Leeds have subsequently fallen, reducing property crime (particularly burglary) and enhancing community safety remain key priorities for the city. This is particularly pertinent in the existing climate of policing cuts and austerity measures, which have contributed to a clear focus towards more accurately targeted resources and an evidence-based approach. This project takes a localised approach to exploring the nature of burglary and burglars. The aims are to understand the nuances and patterns of target selection amongst burglars, which will help support targeted operational policing, and enable the provision of targeted crime prevention advice. To achieve these aims, a mixed-methods approach has been used; namely, the analysis of burglary offence data collected by the police, as well as interviews undertaken with a sample of incarcerated offenders who have current or previous convictions for burglary. The analysis of offence data helped to derive offence-based MOs; these centred around features such as opportunism, ‘sneak-in’ offences, the use of force, and the age of offenders. This revealed five offence-based MO groupings; “Sneak Offences”; “Smash and Grab”; “Local Youthful Opportunism”; “Confident Opportunism” and “Local Juvenile Poverty Predation.” Offender-based MOs were subsequently derived through the interviews undertaken; these resulted in the identification of ‘professional’, ‘opportunist’, and ‘sneak-in’ offender-based MOs. Offence and offender-based MOs are contrasted and compared in the discussion. The nature, value and extent to which offenders and offences were characterised by these groupings is subsequently discussed. This project also revealed a number of findings with clear utility in supporting crime prevention and operational policing efforts. These include the importance of cover in target selection, understanding the ‘mindset’ of a property’s residents, the nature of journeys to and from crime, the process of ‘offloading’ stolen goods, the ability of offenders to ‘blend in’ to their surroundings, serial targets, and the importance of police-linked alarms as a deterrent. The research concludes by highlighting potential avenues for future work in this field.

Though motor vehicle theft (MVT) has been a major problem in Saudi Arabia (SA) for several decades, particularly in the capital Riyadh, few researchers have investigated this problem. Likewise, understanding the creation of the spatiotemporal patterns of MVT as a key element in tackling crime is also under- researched. This study aims to address this substantial research gap by utilising routine activity theory (RAT) and crime pattern theory (CPT). However, two issues need to be taken into consideration: that RAT and CPT will be applied outside their original context in the West and that few studies have utilised them to model MVT. As such, a contribution of this study is the evaluation of the applicability of these theories to both the Saudi context and MVT in general. The empirical work of this study using RAT and CPT was designed to meet two objectives. First, exploratory spatial analysis techniques were used to determine whether MVTs tended to show high concentrations in certain neighbourhoods and at particular times of the day. Second, regression analysis methods were implemented to identify and predict the factors that contributed to these concentrations of MVTs. The main findings suggest that, due to the substantial difference between contexts, the spatiotemporal patterns of MVT in Riyadh were somewhat different from those in the West. Due to the nature of MVT, the variables associated with RAT explained MVT well at certain times of the day but were insufficient during other periods; however, the variables associated with CPT were not able to explain MVT well at any time of the day. The final chapter of the study addresses the implications for research and police practice. A significant implication of this study is that the explanatory variables varied in their effects on MVT throughout the day and across the areas studied. This allowed for the provision of recommendations for the Saudi police, such as giving priority to tackling MVT in certain areas that experience high MVTs at particular times.

The Internet can be considered a double-edged sword because while offering a range of benefits, it provides criminals with the opportunity to extend their work to areas and places previously unimaginable. Therefore, all countries face the same challenges on how to fight cybercrime and how to effectively promote security to their citizens and organisations. In Jordan, cybercafes have become "culturally acceptable alternatives" and a haven for individuals wanting to engage in some form of deviant behaviour away from the prying eyes of society. The aim of this research is to examine the online behaviours of individuals living in two different cyberspaces (English and Non-English). The literature currently available has no such conducted research. Therefore, this research has attempted to address this significant gap in the research by examining the relationship between online behaviour and computer victimisation in two countries; the UK as an example of an English cyberspace in a developed country, and Jordan as a Non-English cyberspace in a developing country. This thesis, in addition, draws attention to the growIng numbers of cybercrime victims, and the techniques used by cyber criminals to victimise them. Understanding the trends of cybercrime and the strategies employed by cyber criminals in order to commit cybercrime will help us to identify the steps that needs be taken to prevent such criminal activities. This study investigates individuals who do or do not take precautions to guard themselves against cybercrime, and examines how their perception of law influences their actions towards incidents of cybercrime. In this study, 'guardianship' refers to actions or procedures that individuals take to ensure that any given computer is secure before they go online, and is linked to the awareness of risks associated with the use of the Internet that an individual may have. Environmental crime theories are popular because of their success in solving traditional crime; Life-style Routine Activity Theory (LRA T) is a good example of these traditional crime theories. The particular interest of this thesis is how to benefit from these crime theories in the fight against cybercrime victimisation. This study has assessed a new theoretical model derived from LRA T. This new conceptual model expands upon digital capable guardianship elements by adding the element of "Awareness", using statistical evidence to demonstrate its key significance in bringing about online harmony alongside the three pre-existing elements (Formal Social Control, Informal Social Control, and Target Hardening). The conceptual model and theoretical basis of this research suggests that it is not only computer-related Formal Social Control (FSC) aspects which can have an impact upon an individual's perception of online activities, but also posits that an individual's awareness can influence their online behaviours. The results of this research allows us to determine the effectiveness of both FSC and "Awareness" on the behaviours of individuals within the overall efforts of a society to fight cybercrime victimisation. This is an extension to the existing literature which typically focuses on technical perspectives to ensure computer security.