World Crime: Modern Trends and Strategies of Counteraction

The article describes the current trends of crime and its specific patterns in different parts of the world and presents the progressive international experience in combating certain types of crime on the basis of analysis of The Thirteenth UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. During the period of 2003–2013 the world has witnessed relatively stable crime rate. However, it varies throughout different world regions. For example, considering murders it can be stated that their lowest level in relative terms is fixed in Europe, Asia, and Oceania (2–4 per 100 thousand of population). In the countries of Latin America, the murder rate by this indicator equals 16. During the last decade, a correlation of income and crime can be clearly set. For example, in Europe and North America there is a decrease in the main types of property and violent crime. In Latin America and Africa, on the contrary, crime increases. The most common and profitable examples of transnational organized crime are drug crime, economic crime, cyber crime, human traffic. Maritime piracy and illegal gambling is spreading rapidly. In order to prevent these crimes, it is recommended to improve the national criminal legislation and develop international cooperation in this field.
The worldwide characteristics of human traffic shows the following: the most widespread is traffic for sexual exploitation (53 %); women and young girls are the main victims of human traffic; in 2007–2014 the number of cases of traffic for forced labor has increased by 40 %; 30 % of human traffic victims are children. The most advanced prevention of this phenomenon has been developed in the USA, UK, Brasil and other countries. The development of information technologies leads to the spread of cybercrime, the profit from which on a global scale equals 20–40 billion US dollars annually. In order to combat cybercrime successfully in developed countries it has been proposed to: share experiences across countries to prevent such crimes; facilitate the access of law enforcement bodies to e-databases; improve mechanisms for handling electronic evidence in the indicated category of criminal proceedings. The world community has recognized the leading role of the public in its multiple revelations
in crime prevention. The modern practice of combating crime proves that the most common forms of public participation in this area are: studying the state of local crime (Colombia, South Africa); recidivism prevention (Singapore, Brazil); keeping public order (US, UK, Peru, Brazil); giving free legal aid (Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda) etc.