NCJ Number
226592
Journal
Criminology and Criminal Justice Volume: 8 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 389-419
Date Published
November 2008
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This article examines the settings for frauds in the context of crime networks, fraud opportunities, and of a victim-centric typology of fraud.
Abstract
Findings suggest that the globalization of crime is part of contingent relationships between settings, with their rich and varied opportunities (reflecting patterns of business, consumer, and investment activities), the abilities of would-be perpetrators to recognize and act on those opportunities (the ‘crime scripts’ perspective), and their interactions with controls, including law enforcement (touched only lightly upon in this article). Constructs of ‘organized crime’ should be and are becoming less obsessed with the structure of groups than with what people need from the largely illicit and largely licit worlds to go about the business of fraud. Analysis of ‘organized-ness’ is becoming de-centered and re-examined as much in terms of the settings in which offending and its precursors can take place, as in terms of the acts themselves. Although some frauds are committed by generic transnational organized crime networks, others are merely mobile small groups or individuals who can transplant techniques wherever they go; others commit very large one time frauds without a need for long-term involvement in organized crime. Tables, notes, and references