By Liudmila Rosca,
London Metropolitan University.
This thesis seeks to shift the research focus from the characteristics and impact of criminal organisations to the societal factors that facilitate their emergence and growth. In Russia, criminal organisations comprised of state officials, businesspeople, and law enforcement members have successfully obtained financial and economic gains. Law enforcement and government officials were tasked with combating organised crime, but they often benefited from these criminal activities and forced illicit businesses to submit to their monitoring. To understand the Russian Mafia's success, one must investigate its background and the conditions that allowed it to thrive in the state.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8371323
By Tea Österlund,
London Metropolitan University.
In recent years, western criminal justice systems have been criticised for their problematic handling of rape cases. Equally, there has been a rising demand from academic circles for these systems to be fundamentally reformed to eliminate attitudes and legislation that perpetuates rape culture. This research project serves as a pilot study aiming to assess the prevalence of rape culture in the Finnish legal system and to explore the potential impact of recent Finnish sex crime legislation. The methodology used in this study is desk-based research. By applying this method, the study juxtaposes precedents from both the Finnish and Swedish Supreme Courts. Sweden was chosen for this comparative analysis because of the similarities between the two countries' criminal justice systems and legislative structures. Moreover, both countries have recently reformed their sex crime legislation.
This project arrives at two main findings. Firstly, the study argues that the Finnish legislative system has contributed negatively to rape culture by legally defining rape through violence or the threat of it. Secondly, the most significant change in recent Swedish sex crime legislation, in terms of challenging rape culture, was the recognition of 'negligent rape'. The project posits that while efforts have been made to eliminate rape culture from the Finnish legal system, there remains room for improvement. Similar to Sweden, the Finnish system could more actively challenge rape culture by criminalising 'negligent rape'. As this research project serves as a pilot study, it provides a foundation for further exploration into the effectiveness of reforms.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8415078
By Siobhan Jamieson,
London Metropolitan University.
County lines is still an emerging phenomenon which is widespread across the whole of the United Kingdom (Pitts, 2020). Due to its geographical spread and the array of offences included within county lines it has been argued by many academics that a multi-agency response is the best way to tackle it (Burt et al., 2022). Therefore, this dissertation will explore county lines and the multi-agency approach to policing it using a library-based approach consisting of secondary analysis (McCartan and Robson, 2016). This dissertation will do so by exploring county lines, the scale and impact of this type of offending, particular multi-agency responses, the effectiveness of them and any rooms for improvement. The dissertation will conclude that although multi-agency work has led to a large number of county lines being shut down, these offending groups seem to learn from this and evolve to become better (O’Hagan and Edmundson, 2021). Therefore, county lines may never fully be eradicated.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8309829