In the future, criminal activity and crime will be influenced by such factors as globalization and integration. Still, some crime trends remain the same including drug and human trafficking, prostitution, and theft. All of these crimes can be regarded as international; problems affected millions of people around the world. Though social researchers disagree over why people are drawn into crimes, there is no argument among people so engaged. The main argument is money, and the pursuit of it—particularly among major criminals pushing cocaine and heroin—evokes every illegal act that falls within the analytical categories discussed above (economic and corruptive), with the prevalence of the direct impact occurring in the systemic and corruptive areas.
In the future, drug and human traffickers’ criminality will be linked to the systemic violence and corruptive categories, as is their related criminal support system, which focuses on acquiring, securing, laundering, and safely guarding money and getting and preserving positions of power.
Drug and human traffickers, not consumers, commit most drug-related homicides. Drug traffickers use the billions at their command to attempt—largely productively—to corrupt, subvert, or eliminate the state agencies and people who stand in their way. In general, criminality does not end with these more sensational and individual acts of depriving, hurting, maiming, and destroying. Even the “benign” repatriation of drug traffickers’ assets through illegal cash laundering—whether this entails investment in lawful enterprise or disbursement to cover business debts in the underground economy—adds to criminality (Booth and Dunne, 2002).
Corruption will also be one of the main problems for the criminal justice system. Beyond that political leaders in many countries corrupt the state or leaders who run it to improve goods movement and access to intelligence, protect persons and property, allow for easier repatriation of financial resources, and build respectability through political influence. Corruptive state officials are accordingly a second major hallmark ranking traffickers and perhaps of several lesser ones as well.
Experience bred in conflict has honed control and discipline among criminal organizations worldwide. The new criminal methods, supported by the state, will be much more sophisticated than the old ones of the Sicilian mafia. One international critic admits that international criminals have become the “global mafia,” a new monolithic threat able of invoking fears such as those stirred up by East-West rhetoric about communism and capitalism (Booth and Dunne, 2002).
The new trends of crime will involve the area of computer crimes: hacker attacks, identity theft, etc. The strict control of officials and the police should be the core policy of the state. However, it appears the isolated entrepreneurial vendor will be increasingly being replaced by a network. Insofar as this is true, the state should control almost all criminal activity to hasten processes of social disorganization. The assaults on state authorities even allowing that some governments may be worthy of attack and their laws appropriately subverted—create considerable social and economic overhead and institutional squander and debris, an effect particularly pronounced in states enjoying a modicum of legitimate government and rule of law.
Cybercrime will be a serious problem for the business world, and it has become more and more aggravating with the development of technologies and with the growing availability of internet access (Booth and Dunne, 2002). The possibilities of committing this type of crime have become wider as value has appeared to be of great value when compared to things. What was a virtual product that could be sold as well at the market as what was a real product and even better? Intellectual capital became a better and more important asset than for instance coal, gas, or steel. Ideas and their practical applications were taken advantage of to a great extent due to the widespread use of computers and the Internet.
References
Booth, K., Dunne, T. (2002). Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order. Palgrave Macmillan.