Electronic commerce, broadly defined as doing business online, has with the advent of the Internet and more importantly of the World Wide Web, developed at an unanticipated speed. Electronic transactions have been said to be very convenient, fast and limitless. This limitless character of electronic commerce does not only have advantages but also a number of disadvantages. E-commerce has opened very wide doors to criminals who take advantage of both the advancement in technology and the cross-border nature of the Internet to deceive other people. Over the years there have been attempts to find solutions to the increasing problem of cybercrime in general, and crime in international electronic commerce (IEC) in particular. To date, even though techniques have been developed, laws have been enacted and some initiatives are still ongoing, there seems to be much more to do in order to achieve a successful fight against online crime. E-commerce has been presented as an aspect of the broad cyber universe and the solutions so far provided are meant for cybercrime in general. Thus, it appears that e-commerce and more precisely crime in IEC is an aspect that should be given consideration to in the sense that specific laws need to be passed on the issue. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The growth of mass tourism has placed great pressure on British seaside destinations, and has contributed to the social costs experienced by the resident population via symptoms of changing perceptions, attitudes and behaviour towards tourism, and the presence of higher crime rates. This thesis examines the social reality experienced by residents, and determines the impacts of tourism-related crime upon two tourist communities which are experiencing high levels of crime. The comparative study of a British seaside resort and a coastal town reveals that tourism communities are influenced by individual resident opinions. Simultaneously these communities influence resident perception and behaviour towards tourism-related crime, and it is through this exchange process, that evidence of destination specific criteria has emerged. The research established that the resort community found commonality through the mutual gaze, whilst the coastal community formed closed perceptions of deviant activities through discord and the local gaze. The study concludes by arguing that a destination offering a hedonistic lifestyle will not necessarily have higher crime rates than other safer destinations. This is due to the widespread implementation of crime prevention methods in the resort, and the lack of deterrents established in the coastal town. Therefore there may be nothing criminogenic about these particular destinations. Instead, collective community perception, digressed through crime talk, has influenced community crime interpretation and individual resident evaluation of the tourism industry.

This thesis explores the impact of crime on seaside resorts in mid-nineteenth century England, together with the implications and challenges presented for authority and control. The evidence is based on a case study of two contrasting south Devon resorts, Exmouth and Torquay. The research findings are based mainly on the period between 1835 and 1860. In particular, the thesis considers the nature and scale of crime committed and the reactions produced amongst those in positions of power and authority. The responses of these influential individuals and groups were shaped by a range of factors such as social and economic change, class, gender and the unique characteristics of seaside resorts. As the fledgling tourist industry developed, it was important to provide an environment where visitors were welcome and their property was safe. The evidence from the two resorts reflected patterns of crime detected in other parts of the country, especially in relation to property crime, which is examined in detail. Larceny emerges as the most common category of crime. Here, the evidence indicates that this crime was regularly perpetrated by servants, with women often being convicted for stealing clothes and other wearing apparel. Workplace theft was common in Torquay, related to the fact that building work was going ahead at a fast pace from the 1830s. The most distinctive feature of crime within the two resorts can be found in the attention given to countering anti-social behaviour and keeping order on the streets. This was closely tied up with the maintenance of ‘social tone’, which was of crucial importance to the authorities in a number of nineteenth century seaside resorts, including Exmouth and Torquay.

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Much current research on victimisation focuses primarily on demographic risk factors associated with those who have experienced crime and how these factors affect the likelihood of a person breaching the so called ‘first hurdle’. That is, the probability of moving from a state of non-victim to one of victim. In contrast, this thesis will argue that in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of victimisation, it is not only desirable but necessary to move beyond the study of the causes of criminal victimisation and examine the consequences for victims as well as the criminal justice system as a whole. Thus, it seeks to explain the experience of victimisation not just as an isolated incident, but as a process consisting of a number of steps or stages of progression through the criminal justice system, each one building on the last. As such, in addition to considering risk factors, this thesis also examines the decision to report a crime to the police, the use of victim services, as well as the perceived satisfaction with services received. In so doing it explores not only the causes and consequences of crime, but the longer term impact of criminal victimisation. The results presented here are based on the secondary analysis of data from the 2008/9 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey complimented by a data set acquired through in-depth interviews with victims of crime from the Edinburgh Local Authority. Interview data is used to provide a greater depth of meaning to the patterns which emerged from the survey data; lending insight into the psychological processes driving victim decision making and behaviour. This thesis thus provides an example of how a combination of techniques including multi-level modelling and interview analysis, provide a clearer understanding of how victims experience crime. Findings suggest that factors associated with each step of the process are related and may represent a more general underlying pattern of victimisation. It is also argued that by employing multi-level analysis, the thesis provides a more accurate explanation of how respondent’s experiences may differ according to the context in which they live. Finally, the analysis highlights the ongoing importance of emotion in victim decision making and the severity of long term impact. The analysis presented offers new insights into how we understand victimisation as an ongoing experience, as well as demonstrating the necessity of the analytic techniques employed. It is however somewhat confined by the coverage of survey questions and the limited generalizability of the data collected in interviews due to the small sample size. These concerns will be discussed, along with recommendations for victim policy and future research.

This thesis encompasses three essays around criminal behaviour with the first one analysing the impact of programmes aimed at poverty reduction, the second one developing a theoretical model of hysteresis in crime, and the third one empirically investigating the hysteresis hypothesis in crime rates. In the first chapter I investigate the impact of conditional cash transfers (CCT) on crime rates by analysing the Brazilian Bolsa Familia, the largest CCT programme in the world, in a panel data between 2001 and 2008. The related existing economic literature analysing general welfare programmes usually ignores the crucial endogeneity involved in the relationship between crime rates and social welfare policies through poverty, since poorer regions are focused in the distribution of resources. I use the existing temporal heterogeneity in the implementation of the programme across the states to identify the causal impact of CCT programmes on poverty and criminality. The guidelines of the Brazilian programme established that the amount of resources available for each state should be based on the poverty levels in the 2000 Census. However, due to reasons unrelated to poverty levels and crime rates, some states were able to implement the programme to a greater extent more quickly than others. States that reached the level of cash transfer expenditures proposed by the guidelines of the programme more promptly had a more significant reduction in poverty rates. Similar but less robust results are found for crime rates as robbery, theft and kidnapping, while no significant effects were found for homicide and murder, indicating a weak or non-existent relationship between conditional cash transfers and crime. I also develop, to my knowledge, the first theoretical model to explicitly account for hysteresis - a situation where positive exogenous variations in the relevant economic variables have a different effect from negative variations - in both criminal behaviour and crime rates in order to fill the gap between the theoretical predictions and the empirical evidence about the efficiency of policies in reducing crime rates. The majority of the theoretical analyses predict a sharp decrease in crime rates when there are significant improvements in the economic conditions or an increase in the probability of punishment. However, the existing empirical studies have found lower than expected effects on crime rates from variations in variables related to those factors. One important consequence of hysteresis is that the effect on an outcome variable from positive exogenous variations in the determining variables has a different magnitude from negative variations. For example, if hysteresis is present in the criminal behaviour and part of the police force in a city are dismissed in a given year, resulting in an escalation in crime, a reversal of the policy in the following year by readmitting all sacked police officers in an attempt to restore the original crime levels will result in lower crime rates, but higher than the original ones, yielding an asymmetric relationship between police and crime. Hysteresis is considered in a simple framework to model illicit behaviour. At the individual level, if criminal activity is associated with intrinsic sunk costs and learning, then the cost of leaving a criminal career is higher than entering it. At the aggregate level with homogeneous agents, this is translated into a hysteresis effect that will only occur if a specific threshold is surpassed. With heterogeneous agents, this phenomenon is reinforced generating a hysteresis effect that exists for all possible values of the variable affecting the crime decision. There are multiple equilibria at both levels. In the last chapter I empirically investigate the existence of hysteresis in crime rates. To my knowledge, this is the first empirical study to consider the existence of asymmetric effects on crime from variations in the probability of punishment and in the opportunity cost of crime. More specifically, I investigate whether positive variations on variables associated to those factors, respectively police officers and average level of income, are statistically different from negative variations. Using US crime data at the state level between 1977 and 2010, I find that police force size and real average income of unskilled workers have asymmetric effects on most types of crimes. The absolute value of the average impact of positive variations in those variables on property and violent crime rates are statistically smaller than the absolute value of the average effect of negative variations. These effects are robust under several specifications. A closer inspection of the data reveals a relatively monotonic negative relationship between wages and property crime rates, as well as negative variations in police and most crime rates. However, the relationships between positive variations in law enforcement size and most crime rates are non-linear. The magnitude of the observed asymmetries supports the hypothesis of hysteresis in crime, and suggests that no theoretical or empirical analysis would be complete without careful consideration of that important feature in the relationships between crime, police and legal income. These results corroborate the argument that policy makers should be more inclined to set pre-emptive policies rather than mitigating measures.

This thesis explores the concepts of ‘crime’, justice and punishment through the narratives of male ex‐prisoners. I adopt a critical criminological perspective and seek to humanise those who have been made monstrous by their status as ex‐prisoners by allowing their stories to be heard. I provide a unique examination of ex‐prisoners’ identities and argue that if we allow those who have experienced prison to tell their stories, new theories and counter discourses about prisons and justice can develop. By hearing these stories we are forced to confront the ex‐prisoner ‘other’, and must explain our own fears, disgust, pity, vitriol, but also fascination with those who have been punished. In hearing the stories of the ex‐prisoner ‘other’, we must reflect on what demands for ever harsher penalties, greater restrictions on liberty, disenfranchisement, and the denial of full human rights does: to those whom we focus these pains upon, and on us, as a society, who believe pain is the equivalent of justice. The methodology of the thesis involved life story research with 15 male ex‐prisoners. Utilising intertextuality, myth and mythology, the arc of the ex‐prisoners’ life stories is followed in analysing: life before prison, imprisonment, and life after prison. In doing this, consideration is given to the outlaw identities of the men when they were actively involved in offending, the prison myths that shaped their experience of incarceration, and the mutable identities that they adopt on release. The stories recounted here offer new ways of understanding ‘crime’, justice and imprisonment. They also, I argue, have the power to problematize existing discourses about prisons and punishment, and to open up new possibilities for social justice.

Since the day Saudi Arabia was founded, its highly centralised and paramilitary police organisation remained immune to scrutiny, and police performance and their relationship with the public have remained uncharted territories.  But lately, in response to leaking reports about rising crime levels and an escalating social control crisis, writers affiliated to the police organisation were quick to deny that a real crime problem exists.  However, some of those writers do admit that a serious social disorder problem is now brewing, and they find an urgent need to address the crisis.  According to them, any effective response requires a community orientated policing strategy to be applied immediately, even without debate or planning. The statement above raises three important questions.  First, does a social control problem really exist? Secondly, if yes, would a community policing (CP) approach address it?  And third, are the police and the public ready for change? To answer those questions, quantitative and qualitative data have been collected from a wide range of sources.  Results obtained from the data show clearly that the police are not the effective crime fighters they claim they are.  Further, although it has been found that the Saudi policing system is not without problems, a community policing approach, at least in the sense it is understood in the west, is incompatible with the Saudi culture.  Reasons for this incompatibility have been examined, and suggestions to improve the Saudi police performance have been made.

La collusion est une pratique anticoncurrentielle qui a pour but la coopération de personnes morales afin d’atteindre un but commun tel que le profit. Cette méthode se retrouve dans le milieu de la construction notamment par la rotation de contrat, par la fixation de prix ou le débalancement de bordereaux. Bien que la collusion dans la construction soit souvent associée au crime organisé, cette étude propose l’hypothèse d’un contrôle du marché par le crime organisant et non le crime organisé. Ainsi, l’industrie de la construction serait influencée par une organisation en mouvance et en développement constant pouvant s’organiser tout en organisant d’autres noyaux. En analysant le marché de l’industrie de la construction, cette étude a pu relever qu’il était possible à l’aide d’outils quantitatifs tels que l’analyse de classification d’identifier des irrégularités au sein du marché, au fil des années. Des entrevues passées auprès d’acteurs du domaine de la construction sont venues confirmer l’hypothèse d’un contrôle du marché par le crime organisant et non le crime organisé. L’analyse qualitative se penchait ainsi sur les motivations des acteurs à entreprendre des pratiques anticoncurrentielles et sur la compréhension de l’émergence de la collusion dans la construction. La discussion identifie les opportunités criminelles, de même que les problématiques survenant dans le milieu de la construction et pouvant influencer l’émergence de la collusion. Ces problématiques concernent les contributions aux partis politiques, le truquage des devis et bordereaux par les firmes de consultants, l’impunité des autorités, l’historicité des entrepreneurs, l’idéologie de marché et les problématiques liées au cautionnement. Enfin, des solutions adaptées à la réalité de l’industrie de la construction en tenant compte des facteurs de risque ont été identifiées. / In its definition, collusion is an uncompetitive practice where individuals cooperate for a specific goal, mainly for profit. Different methods have been documented in the construction industry such as rotation of contracts, fixing prices, or unbalanced payment slips. Collusion has often been associated with organised crime; however, this study will offer the idea that the market is not controlled by organised crime but rather an organising crime group. The construction industry would be influenced by a constant evolving and expanding organisation that can organise itself and other smaller groups. The analysis of the economic market in the industry sector, through the use of quantitative methods such as the classification analysis, permits this study to identify the influence of a particular group of recurring enterprises over the years. The interviews, done with actors of the industry, support the idea that the industry sector is controlled by organising crime and not organised crime. The qualitative analysis focuses on the motivational factors of these individuals in determining their participation in uncompetitive practices and their own comprehension of the emergence of collusion in the construction sector. The discussion identifies the different criminal opportunities and challenges that arise in construction and offers a correlation to the emergence of collusion. Specifically, these challenges are the problematic contributions to political parties, the rigging of cost estimates and payment slips by consulting firms, the impunity of authorities, the historicity of entrepreneurs, the ideology of the market and the problems linked to the use of bank guarantees. Lastly, solutions tailored to the reality of the construction industry and its risk factors are presented.

<p>Urban problems have several features that make them inherently dynamic. Large transaction costs all but guarantee that homeowners will do their best to consider how a neighborhood might change before buying a house. Similarly, stores face large sunk costs when opening, and want to be sure that their investment will pay off in the long run. In line with those concerns, different areas of Economics have made recent advances in modeling those questions within a dynamic framework. This dissertation contributes to those efforts.</p><p>Chapter 2 discusses how to model an agent’s location decision when the agent must learn about an exogenous amenity that may be changing over time. The model is applied to estimating the marginal willingness to pay to avoid crime, in which agents are learning about the crime rate in a neighborhood, and the crime rate can change in predictable (Markovian) ways.</p><p>Chapters 3 and 4 concentrate on location decision problems when there are externalities between decision makers. Chapter 3 focuses on the decision of business owners to open a store, when its demand is a function of other nearby stores, either through competition, or through spillovers on foot traffic. It uses a dynamic model in continuous time to model agents’ decisions. A particular challenge is isolating the contribution of spillovers from the contribution of other unobserved neighborhood attributes that could also lead to agglomeration. A key contribution of this chapter is showing how we can use information on storefront ownership to help separately identify spillovers.</p><p>Finally, chapter 4 focuses on a class of models in which families prefer to live</p><p>close to similar neighbors. This chapter provides the first simulation of such a model in which agents are forward looking, and shows that this leads to more segregation than it would have been observed with myopic agents, which is the standard in this literature. The chapter also discusses several extensions of the model that can be used to investigate relevant questions such as the arrival of a large contingent high skilled tech workers in San Francisco, the immigration of hispanic families to several southern American cities, large changes in local amenities, such as the construction of magnet schools or metro stations, and the flight of wealthy residents from cities in the Rust belt, such as Detroit.</p> / Dissertation