Cryptocurrencies are private, decentralized currencies that operate via the Internet and have attracted criminals because of the convenience and virtual anonymity they offer. While there are many descriptive accounts of cryptocurrencies and their use both in legal and illegal operations, to date there is no empirical research to understand the use of cryptocurrencies in transnational crime operations, specifically why transnational criminals may find them attractive to either conduct business or to launder their illicit proceeds. Using the environmental criminological framework, this study analyzed 100 cases of cryptocurrency use in transnational crime activities identified through various secondary sources, including online newspaper articles and publicly available court case information. Essentially this study used both quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the ways in which cryptocurrencies facilitate transnational crimes. The findings indicate that criminals have been using cryptocurrencies to conceal the enormous amounts of money they are receiving for their crimes, specifically money laundering, drug trafficking (illicit drug sales), and terrorism financing. It was found that offenders can conduct business, launder money, and make a profit by using cryptocurrencies to facilitate their crimes, creating for crime opportunities permitted by cryptocurrencies. These opportunities include the ease of floating from one crime to another and using cryptocurrencies to cover offenders’ tracks, where cryptocurrencies can transact, launder, and conceal all in one. It was found that offenders gravitate towards using bitcoin to facilitate their operations, most likely due to its popularity and reliability. When looking at the crime of money laundering and illicit drug sales specifically, it was found that offenders can generate higher operation amounts, spanning into billions of dollars, all while evading detection. With the assumption that transnational criminals are rational beings, money laundering using cryptocurrencies has enormous benefits with these high operation amounts. This coupled with the low chances of being caught by law enforcement, makes money laundering a feasible crime where the benefits far outweigh the risks. This exploratory research is innovative and imperative to expanding academic knowledge on the evolution of crime with the use of cryptocurrencies and assisting in reducing the opportunities cryptocurrencies allow in transnational crime operations.
This chapter describes security conditions in the Shanghai Metropolitan Area, where crime analysis is a pressing issue for public security. It focuses on the efficacy of the city's strategies and measures in preventing violence and crime. In Shanghai, these strategies have developed largely through security measures used at the community level. The chapter suggests that the police and the citizens themselves have developed ways to ensure their personal protection and the protection of their property. It examines both components of public security in Shanghai, and suggests that decentralization efforts at the macro level have directly led to increased community involvement and private participation at the local level. As Shanghai has become the center of economy and finance in China, so too have elements of modem society, -items of personal property, cash, stocks, and valued securities have become targets of criminal activity.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have had a profound impact on American policing, requiring that police agencies substantially modify various elements of their policies, operations, and training. This article examines several types of changes local American police agencies will have to implement if they are to effectively meet the challenges of preventing, deterring, responding to, and investigating terrorist acts. Police agencies face a compelling need for more sophisticated intelligence gathering and analysis, as well as better dissemination of terrorism intelligence among local, state and federal agencies. There is also the need for more sophisticated operational policies with regard to terrorism response, greater cooperation and sharing of resources among local public safety agencies, and more comprehensive training that educates police officers to the realities of contemporary terrorist methods and activities. Finally, the need for effective investigation and prosecution of terrorist acts demands that agencies ignore or overcome the traditional organizational boundaries and rivalries that impede the achievement of these and other goals. The article also points some of the difficulties involved in implementing the necessary changes within a highly decentralized system of thousands of relatively autonomous local agencies, and it illuminates some of the initiatives undertaken by the New York Police Department (NYPD) to overcome these obstacles and more effectively prepare for the terrorist threat.