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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:02 am
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Results for agricultural crime
3 results foundAuthor: Ferrier, Peyton Title: The Economics of Agricultural and Wildlife Smuggling Summary: The United States bans imports of certain agricultural and wildlife goods that can carry pathogens or diseases or whose harvest can threaten wildlife stocks or endanger species. Despite these bans, contraband is regularly uncovered in inspections of cargo containers and in domestic markets. This study characterizes the economic factors affecting agricultural and wildlife smuggling by drawing on inspection and interdiction data from USDA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and existing economic literature. Findings reveal that agricultural and wildlife smuggling primarily include luxury goods, ethnic foods, and specialty goods, such as traditional medicines. Incidents of detected smuggling are disproportionately higher for agricultural goods originating in China and for wildlife goods originating in Mexico. Fragmentary data show that approximately 1 percent of all commercial wildlife shipments to the United States and 0.40 percent of all U.S. wildlife imports by value are refused entry and suspected of being smuggled. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Services, 2009. 35p. Source: Internet Resource; Economic Research Report No. 81. Accessed August 16, 2010 at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err81/err81.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err81/err81.pdf Shelf Number: 116551 Keywords: Agricultural CrimeIllicit TradeOffenses Against the EnvironmentSmugglingWildlife Crime |
Author: Steinberg, Jonny Title: After the Commandos. The Future of Rural Policing in South Africa Summary: In February 2003, President Thabo Mbeki announced that the South African National Defence Force's (SANDF) Territorial Reserve, popularly known as the Commandos, would be phased out. This phasing out process is now well underway. By the end of 2009, the last of South Africa's 183 Commandos will have ceased operating, their rural crime prevention and borderline control functions taken over by the South African Police Service (SAPS). The task of this monograph is to assess the rural safety capacity that will be lost with the closing of the Commandos, and to discuss the manner in which the SAPS will replace that capacity. To this end, we conducted fieldwork in the three Commando jurisdictions: Ladybrand in the eastern Free State, De Mist in Eastern Cape, and West Rand and Gatsrand Commando areas in Gauteng. Commando strength is uneven. In Ladybrand, for instance, commercial farmers are actively involved in a number of grassroots security initiatives, primarily in defence of their commercial property, but the Commando is a marginal player in these initiatives. Moreover, the farming community is deeply divided over how the borderline with Lesotho ought to be policed, and, by proxy, over the role the Commando ought to play in borderline control. The De Mist Commando in Eastern Cape, by contrast, is highly organised, has a large active membership, and a clear and uncontested rural crime prevention programme. It is the dominant player in rural crime prevention; most police stations in its jurisdiction invest the lion's share of their resources in urban policing. In the West Rand, there is a strong identification between white farmers and the Commando, primarily as a result of the Commando's competence in policing agricultural crimes. We ask whether the Commandos are representative of rural South Africa, and argue that they are not; their function is primarily to protect the property and interests of the rural middle class. This is not necessarily illegitimate. Rural South Africa is deeply divided, by race, by inequality, and by a great deal of history. Asking a security agency to bridge these divides is asking too much; security agencies can neither mend souls nor conduct projects of social engineering. A more pertinent question to ask is whether the Commandos can make an effective contribution to policing agricultural crimes while not invading the privacy and violating the dignity of other rural constituencies. We argue that when deployed inappropriately, Commandos can indeed be destructive of social harmony and wellbeing, but that when deployed correctly they are both effective and benign. Finally, we argue that the policing of agricultural crimes, and of the rural sectors of small town police stations more generally, is likely to deteriorate after the closure of the Commandos. However, we do not pretend to offer easy solutions to the problem. The matter is by its nature a difficult one. All police services exercise discretion in deciding which aspects of policing to prioritise. In the SAPS, this discretion is exercised primarily at a national level. Area and station level managers are given quantifiable crime reduction and police action targets to meet. At present, the highest priority crimes in the SAPS are contact crimes, and are attached to an annual crime reduction target of seven percent. This is a normative, value-laden decision, and a commendable one at that. In small town police stations, however, the policing of rural sectors will suffer as a result. Many of these stations straddle a sharp divide between urban and rural areas. Most contact crimes are committed in urban sectors. If and when the capacity contained in the Commandos is transferred to the police, area and station level managers are bound to transfer much of this capacity from the rural sectors in which it is now deployed to urban sectors. Not to do so would be to respond irrationally to their own performance indicators. Prioritising the policing of, say, aggravated robbery over sheep theft is not just understandable but commendable. The SAPS should be aware though that there are places where its existing organisational incentives might, unless checked, result in situations where agricultural crimes are almost entirely unpoliced. Details: Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2005. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: ISS Monograph Series, No. 120: Accessed April 4, 2018 at: https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/120FULL.PDF Year: 2005 Country: South Africa URL: https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/120FULL.PDF Shelf Number: 100558 Keywords: Agricultural CrimeCattle TheftRural AreasRural CrimeRural Policing |
Author: Smith, Kreseda Title: Behavioural Science and Farm Crime Prevention Decision Making: understanding the behavioural culture of farmers in England and Wales Summary: Farms in England and Wales continue to have low levels of crime prevention measures in use despite the increasing threat, and what is used is often ineffective. As such, there is a clear need to employ different decision-making models in crime prevention advice for farmers. The principal aim of this research was to explore and better understand the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of farmers towards crime, crime prevention, the police, and insurers. Moreover, an attempt to understand how farmers make decisions about crime prevention, what factors influence those decisions, and how this compares to approaches the police are taking to tackle farm crime. A mixed methods sequential explanatory model was used so that both quantitative and qualitative data could be fully examined separately, before being brought together to provide appropriate conclusions based on the combined results. Results show an impasse between how the police are tackling farm crime and prevention, and the needs of the farmers. This results in farmers believing the police treat them as second-class citizens, and so they do not engage with crime prevention despite knowing they should. Further, farmers do not report crimes to the police as they feel they will not get a response, and it is a waste of their time. This research concludes that there is much the police, insurers, and the media can do to better respond to farm crime. Moreover, this research is the first to identify key factors affecting farmer attitudes and beliefs towards farm crime, farm crime prevention, the police, and their insurers. It is argued that the findings of this research support the use of behavioural science to improve the uptake of appropriate and effective crime prevention on-farm in light of the relative failure of traditional policy. Details: Newport, UK: Harper Adams University, 2018. 383p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed March 22, 2019 at: https://hau.collections.crest.ac.uk/17339/1/Kreseda%20Smith.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://hau.collections.crest.ac.uk/17339/1/Kreseda%20Smith.pdf Shelf Number: 155102 Keywords: Agricultural CrimeCrime Prevention Farm Crime Rural Crime |