Crime

WHAT'S NEXT?: Crime is morphing away from traditional methods to more sophisticated technological approaches. A decline of traditional hierarchical criminal groups and networks will be accompanied by the expansion of a virtual criminal underground made up of individual criminal entrepreneurs. At the same time, forward-looking agencies are equipping themselves with smart technologies to outfox the criminals. Keep up to date with crime changes below.

• Despite a notable increase in the number of right-wing terrorist incidents during the past five years, jihadist terrorism continues to be the most lethal threat to Europe.
• The U.S. has denounced a ruling by the International Criminal Court that its chief prosecutor could probe alleged war crimes in Afghanistan that may have been committed by U.S. and other forces, intensifying a clash with the Trump administration.
• Amnesty International on Wednesday rebuked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over new comments bashing the International Criminal Court and threatening court staff - and their family members-investigating alleged war crimes committed by United States forces in Afghanistan.
• Overall counter-terrorism spending will increase by £114 million in 2020-21 to maintain capability and officer numbers in the face of a changing terrorist threat, and to help keep the UK safe.
• A return to non-strategic decapitation policies of the past decade and half will only exacerbate many of Mexico's security problems, including constant fragmentation of criminal groups and the collapse of their own deterrence capacity against rival groups.
• The threat of terrorism will remain a constant feature of the global security environment in 2020 and the threat to Australia and Australian interests will remain.
• There will be no shortage of issues in 2025 given accelerated global trends: conflicts, wars in the OSCE's neighborhood, migration, terrorism, populism, climate change.
• By 2024, one-third of all Smart Cities use cases will be impacted by 5G, and 75% of large cities will use 5G to scale key services such as real-time crime centers, V2I connectivity, and smart stadiums.
• Another IDC 5G prediction is that by 2024 75% of all large cities will use 5G to scale key services including real-time crime centers, V2I connectivity, and smart stadiums.
• Political instability, diminishing regional and international cooperation, and the increasingly transnational and interconnected nature of criminal syndicates will allow organised crime to prosper in South America over the coming year.
• The UK's prime minister will soon come under pressure to enact his vague promise to solve the social care crisis, enshrine a £33.9bn a year increase in NHS spending, recruit and retain thousands of nurses and police officers, and honour his pledge to pay for a major cut in national insurance.
• Serbia started to implement the new economic chapter of the criminal code and the Law on organisation and jurisdiction of state authorities in the fight against organised crime, terrorism and corruption and adopted a cybercrime strategy for 2019-2023.
• There is no denying that terrorist activities will continue to be frequent and the number of terrorist attacks will remain high for a long time to come.
• Program has made terrorism risk insurance available and affordable in the United States, and the market for terrorism risk insurance has been relatively stable for the past decade.
• The growing pressure on criminal gangs comes after Trump this year forced Mexico's hand on immigration by threatening to impose tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States.
• By 2030, the combination of space technology and AI will have helped us deal with global challenges like deforestation, oil spills, farming, cross-border terrorism and migration flows, and will continue to provide insights that are meaningful at a local level for the economy.
• The world is facing an unprecedented threat from intolerance, violent extremism and terrorism that affects every country, exacerbating conflicts and destabilising entire regions.
• Problems between some countries; challenges to multilateralism; transnational crime, which is estimated to cost more than 100 billion US Dollars a year; disruptive technology; climate change; environmental degradation; and marine debris.
• The new French Indo-Pacific strategy advances three key threats to be met by Paris, beyond dealing with North Korean belligerence: transnational terrorism, Chinese challenges to the multilateral order in the region, as well as climate change.
• Terrorism will continue to be a feature of Europe's security landscape in the coming years, well beyond the threat of IS: anarchic, right - or left - wing terrorism continues to pose a serious problem to the EU but receives much less attention.

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Last updated: 04 April 2020