How does Globalization Impact on Crime and Victimisation?

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As globalization continues to flourish and evolve, this creates further opportunities in which individuals are able to launder money with greater ease, efficiency in profit and sophistication. Through the forms of economic globalization, people may use new forms of travel to their advantage and personal gain. It is widely recognized (Pfaller, A & Lerch, M 2005, Auernheimer, L 2003) that this is becoming a significant challenge in the international sphere. Through globalization, criminals are able to create new means to commit crime for an economic benefit and avoid prosecution through new forms of travel. This allows them to spread transactions across multiple nations around the globe, thus increasing the number of obstacles that need to be overcome for an investigation to be completed (Karofi, U, Mwanza, J). For example, this can be explained through the new forms of money laundering. Money laundering is ‘the process by which one conceals the existence, illegal source, or illegal application of income, and disguises that income to make it appear legitimate’ (President’s Commission on Organised Crime 1984, p. 7). This can be achieved through the process of transporting diamonds or gold or even through wire transfers (Morris-Cotterill, N). The lack of risk that is involved in these contemporary crimes is increasing the appeal for crimes such money laundering to occur. This is due to the fact that criminals know that it will prove to be difficult to investigate and prosecute their activities when it occurs on a transnational basis. This, in turn, gives more individuals the opportunity to commit these crimes with little risk that they will be caught. Furthermore, this targets potential naïve victims into partaking in these forms of c...

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... World Gets High, Portobello Books, UK.
• President’s Commission on Organised Crime 1984, Interim Report to the President and Attorney General, The Cash Connection: Organized Crime, Financial Institutions, and Money Laundering, viewed 28 March 2014, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/166517NCJRS.pdf
• Ray, S 2014, ‘Why gold smuggling is on the rise in India’, 14 March, viewed 2 April 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-26511425
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 2002, Globalization, Drugs and Criminalisation: Final Research Report on Brazil, China, India and Mexico, viewed 3 April 2014, http://www.unesco.org/most/globalisation/drugs_vol2.pdf
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2009, Annual Report 2009, viewed 2 April 2014, http://www.unodc.org/documents/about-unodc/AR09_LORES.pdf

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