Crime Science最新文献

{"title":"From storytelling to scripting: eight principles for deconstructing crime events.","authors":"Hervé Borrion, Paul Ekblom, Alexandre Bish, Congyu Fan, Juliana Gómez-Quintero, Peng Chen, Sonia Toubaline, Alina Ristea, Manny Niri","doi":"10.1186/s40163-026-00286-w","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-026-00286-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper aims to improve crime script analysis, with a particular focus on breaking script stages into smaller, more precise steps. After outlining existing scripting methods, we then introduce eight principles designed to guide both the creation of crime scripts and the evaluation of scripts produced by others. Grounded in the concepts of state and activity, these principles address the following themes: Constitution, Chronology, Composition, Cardinality, Categorisation, Completeness, Clarity, and Consistency. Finally, we discuss the limits of template based approaches, including those built around the universal script. We call for the development of a more flexible scripting method, one that retains the chronological and functional cues of the universal script, but can be applied at any level of abstraction and resolution. Within this context, we believe the above principles can play another important role in its development.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-026-00286-w.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"30"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13503384/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148819821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The association between mobility and crime in England and Wales.","authors":"Hulya Seyidoglu, Jose Pina-Sánchez, Nick Malleson, Graham Farrell","doi":"10.1186/s40163-026-00291-z","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-026-00291-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>This study provides the first national-level longitudinal analysis directly linking mobility data to police-recorded crime across local authorities in England and Wales, while controlling for stable structural differences between places. Its purpose is to examine how changes in human mobility are associated with changes in crime, taking advantage of the disruption in mobility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Negative binomial regression models were applied across 328 local authorities from March 2020 to October 2022, with area fixed effects, to assess how mobility across different activity spaces relates to police-recorded crime while accounting for unobserved, time-invariant local characteristics.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The exploratory and modelling analyses showed that the mobility-crime relationship varied considerably by offence type and across local authorities. Increased residential mobility was consistently associated with lower levels of property, violent, and public order crimes, while mobility around retail, grocery, transit, and workplace areas was generally associated with higher crime once stable local differences were controlled. Sensitivity analyses suggested the results are robust to plausible levels of unobserved confounding.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The impact of mobility on crime during and after the pandemic in England and Wales was not uniform but was shaped by local conditions and time-invariant characteristics. The findings underline the need for place-specific approaches in crime prevention and suggest that mobility-related interventions should be tailored to the structural and social context of each area.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-026-00291-z.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"22"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13372996/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148473304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The topology of cyberspace and cybercrime journeys: a framework for analyzing online offender mobility.","authors":"Asier Moneva, Stijn Ruiter, Wim Bernasco","doi":"10.1186/s40163-026-00294-w","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-026-00294-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>This paper introduces a novel framework for analyzing online offender mobility.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Drawing on multidisciplinary insights, we extend two established criminological models for studying offline offending-the geometry of crime and crime journeys-by adapting their core concepts to cyberspace and developing a topology in which the cyber place is defined and becomes the unit of analysis. Just as offenders travel before, during, and after committing crime offline, we argue they also undertake trips before, during, and after committing cybercrime, and that like offline journeys these cybercrime journeys comprise identifiable and measurable components.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We explicitly demonstrate how concepts from the geometry of crime and crime journeys translate from offline to online crime and mobility. The proposed approach enables the systematic formulation of research questions and the measurement of behavioral patterns, facilitating the generation and accumulation of knowledge on cybercrime offending.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The paper illustrates the framework's theoretical relevance within environmental criminology and its practical application for cybercrime analysis through concrete examples, including an empirical journey into web hacking as a proof-of-concept.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"28"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13493444/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148799133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evolving trends in cryptomining malware: a systematic literature review.","authors":"Ema Mauko, Sara Rubini, Chimdi Igwe","doi":"10.1186/s40163-025-00267-5","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-025-00267-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The rise of <i>'cryptojacking'</i> - the covert use of victim resources for unauthorised cryptocurrency mining - has become a significant cyber threat since the introduction of Bitcoin. Such cryptomining malware secretly hijacks a user's computational power to generate cryptocurrency without their knowledge or consent, leading to reduced and/or degraded performance at the victim's expense. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 119 articles tracing the evolution of cryptomining malware, past trends in their dissemination and detection, security recommendations, and anticipated future developments. We specifically highlight the dual impact of this threat, which targets not only individual users on devices like IoT, mobile phones, and cloud infrastructures, but also critical national infrastructure, large corporate networks, and high-traffic websites. Our analysis reveals that the threat landscape, which significantly expanded around 2017, continues to grow steadily. Additionally, we systematically identify and discuss detection methods - such as network traffic analysis, CPU utilization monitoring, and machine learning classifiers - as well as security recommendations like browser extensions, patch management, and network-level blocking. Our findings highlight the urgent need for a unified, multi-stakeholder security strategy to mitigate this pervasive and adaptable threat.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"14"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13233642/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148200345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crime opportunity theory: the state of the art.","authors":"Graham Farrell, Nick Tilley","doi":"10.1186/s40163-026-00275-z","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-026-00275-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The 1976 monograph <i>Crime as Opportunity</i> initiated a paradigm for how crime and criminality should be understood and controlled. Here we define a crime opportunity as any situation in which the benefits of committing crime outweigh the costs, and group crime opportunity-related theories and concepts under the banner of crime opportunity theory. The study details how reducing crime opportunities has proven successful locally for many different crime types, and how reducing crime opportunities has emerged as the leading explanation for the international crime drop. It concludes that crime opportunity theory should be the principal reference point for explaining and preventing crime and criminality.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"12"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13194318/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148017792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"<i>policedatR</i>: a comprehensive R package for stop and search data in England and Wales.","authors":"Jolyon Miles-Wilson, Celestin Okoroji","doi":"10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on Stop and Search in England and Wales is constrained by substantial barriers to data access, inconsistent geographic coverage, and technical complexity. This paper presents <i>policedatR</i>, an R package that addresses these challenges by providing streamlined access to comprehensive stop and search data from the data.police.uk Application Programming Interface (API). <i>policedatR</i> automates data acquisition across multiple geographic scales, enriches datasets with population estimates and geographic identifiers, and includes functions for analysing the data, including calculating ethnic disproportionality. We describe the architecture and main functionalities of <i>policedatR</i> and demonstrate its capabilities and utility with analyses of temporal trends, geographic variation and ethnic disparities at national (e.g. countrywide, Police Force Area) and local (e.g. sub-local authority) levels. We also provide an example of how data acquired using the package can be harmonised with other datasets (in this case the English Indices of Deprivation) to explore broader questions on stop and search and society. By transforming thousands of individual API calls into a straightforward analytical workflow, <i>policedatR</i> facilitates rigorous empirical research and <i>supports</i> democratic accountability in policing.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"11"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13099712/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147783966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unstructured spare time and crime: toward an integrative model.","authors":"David Buil-Gil, Ken Pease","doi":"10.1186/s40163-026-00276-y","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-026-00276-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Criminological theorizing over the past half century has shown little convergence or integration. Three strands of criminological theory can be identified: dispositional approaches (emphasizing self-control, social learning, biological, and morality theories), ecological theories (emphasizing the crime consequences of dysfunctional communities), and opportunity theories (focusing primarily on places and artifacts that enable or facilitate crime). The discipline's progress has not resulted in a convergence of theoretical propositions. This article offers a potential route toward reconciling these approaches, provisionally termed the Unstructured Spare Time model of crime. It begins with an overview of relevant criminological theories and highlights enduring tensions between individual- and opportunity-based approaches. It then reviews previous integrative efforts, noting their contributions and limitations. The Unstructured Spare Time model is introduced as a conceptual bridge among these traditions. The model posits that unstructured spare time, at the level of individuals, geographic areas, and time periods, is shaped by personal factors, broader social changes, and the spatial organization of cities and towns. This unstructured time, in turn, influences both individual readiness for crime and the availability of crime opportunities. The model advances a dynamic view of how time-use patterns mediate the relationship between personal traits, community conditions, structural factors, and exposure to and engagement in crime. Its central contribution lies in focusing explanation and, by extension, prevention and intervention strategies on a single, observable factor: unstructured spare time. The article summarizes empirical support from recent studies and concludes by outlining directions for future research and refinement of the model.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"10"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13099811/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147783983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How crime data incompleteness shapes ethnic disparities in predictive policing: evidence from Chicago.","authors":"Mengqin K Jiang, Federico Liberatore, Alun Preece","doi":"10.1186/s40163-026-00306-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-026-00306-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>Fairness in Predictive Policing (PP) has been explored by many researchers. However, to the best of our knowledge, no work has quantified the impact of event-level data incompleteness in spatio-temporal prediction on each ethnicity. In this paper, we propose a model to quantify the impact of recorded crime data incompleteness on ethnic disparities in policing. We also examine whether these disparities depend on where in the city data are missing.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We introduce a neighbourhood-level method that allocates PP prediction errors (false positives as potential over-policing, false negatives as potential under-policing) to ethnic groups in proportion to their share of the neighbourhood population. Using Chicago crime records (2022-2024), census data, and HAGEN (a state-of-the-art spatial-temporal PP model), we explore data incompleteness by reducing the original crime data at varying ratios in two settings: (i) 25-100% reductions in neighbourhoods with low racial diversity; (ii) 50% or 100% reductions in communities dominated by a single ethnicity (Hispanic, Non-Hispanic Black, Non-Hispanic White, or Non-Hispanic Asian). Enforcement bias outcomes are then compared across ethnicities and scenarios.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Removing records from a single-ethnicity-majority community generally reduces predicted over-policing and increases predicted under-policing for that ethnicity across the whole study area, with Asian-majority scenarios a consistent exception. In low-diversity neighbourhoods, greater missingness amplifies prediction bias against Non-Hispanic Black residents specifically: predicted over-policing falls and predicted under-policing rises, with the opposite holding for other groups. The largest overall shifts occur when data are removed from Black-majority communities.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Incomplete crime records could propagate into substantial, ethnically unequal disparities in model-predicted policing exposure, whose direction depends on where missingness concentrates. The findings motivate auditing missingness and its demographic distribution as a prerequisite for deploying event-level PP systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"40"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13668894/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149216987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"BAKE: a novel framework for iterative security design for identifying criminally-exploitable vulnerabilities in biotechnology products.","authors":"Mariam Elgabry, Darren Nesbeth, Paul Ekblom, Shane Johnson","doi":"10.1186/s40163-025-00256-8","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-025-00256-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emerging \"in-body\" monitoring, such as via ingestible devices, promises the future of personalised health, yet discussions of crime and security implications remain of low priority. Here, we develop and deploy the scenario building of the Delphi process and the prototyping of the hackathon through a hybrid hackathon Delphi framework that we have labelled \"BAKE\". The aim of BAKE is to capture insight from experts regarding the risks posed by these devices; and to produce evidence for the utility of the model as a mechanism to identify at an early stage of design/development, criminally-exploitable vulnerabilities in biotechnology (bio-electronic devices), especially medical products/services. Findings from four expert groups include the identification of four crime forms (e.g., corporate exploitation, data breaches). Five secure by design principles (e.g., end-to-end encryption) and four governance mechanisms (e.g., independent body) were recognised. Four stakeholders were identified (e.g., technical, advocates for equitable treatment). Results indicate that the inclusion of non-traditional experts and early career researchers within the hackathon model can allow the identification of highly challenging threats within the cyber-physical device system. We demonstrated that hosting a hackathon with an embedded Delphi process can instigate secure by design thinking earlier in the product development life cycle of any emerging technology.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"14 1","pages":"16"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12491385/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The compounding effect: how neighbourhood dynamics shape police deployment and use of force.","authors":"Amal Ali, Jasmine Oware, Jonathan Jackson, Ben Bradford","doi":"10.1186/s40163-025-00258-6","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40163-025-00258-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Calls for service are a major driver of police activity, yet their role in shaping the neighbourhood distribution of police use of force remains under-explored. Understanding where and why force is used requires examining how these calls cluster spatially-and how police interpret and respond to them.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Using administrative data from an English police force (2018-2021), we analyse how neighbourhood characteristics-including mental health prevalence, racial composition, socioeconomic deprivation, residential instability, and crime rates-predict patterns of police deployment and use of force. We link call-for-service records with force incident data to trace the process from (a) call initiation to (b) priority grading, (c) TASER-equipped officer deployment, and (d) eventual use of force.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Calls for service are concentrated in disadvantaged neighbourhoods with elevated mental health need. These areas are also more likely to experience police use of force (including TASER). Yet public demand is refracted through institutional filters-such as call grading and officer deployment decisions-that concentrate how and where force is ultimately applied.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Police use of force does not result from isolated actions, but from a sequence of decisions that compound the existing spatial clustering of public calls for service. Structural disadvantage, mental health distress and operational decision-making interact to concentrate force in already over-burdened communities. Addressing disproportionate use of force requires reform not only of police practice, but also of the upstream social conditions that generate repeated crisis response.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-025-00258-6.</p>","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"14 1","pages":"15"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12491367/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}