New year, new challenges, new logo. Message from the Director

Transcrime was established in 1994 as a Joint Research Centre on Transnational Crime, anticipating scholars, practitioners and policy makers on this issue. Six years later, the signature of the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organised Crime consolidated the past successful experiences of combatting transnational crime and opened the way for modernised actions against crime worldwide. For 29 years, Transcrime has contributed influencing research, operations, and policies at different levels in this domain.

29 years ago, understanding and counteracting transnational crime was a challenge; today, it is a consolidated area among scholars and practitioners which has already produced a variety of studies, policies and has built a large awareness. Today, there are other challenges and this requires Transcrime to update its objectives while maintaining the same pioneering vision of its origins.

“Innovation and crime” is a combination that defines our new objectives. It connects our past initiatives and a new systematic vision for future activities, where we will invest in producing innovative approaches to reduce crime.

Innovation means understanding and explaining, through reliable data, if the changes in crime produced by the pandemic will be episodic or stable. Innovation means understanding and explaining the different forms of crime concentration, either spatial or temporal. Innovation means understanding and explaining how the changes in violence and opportunities are impacting the landscape of actors, modi operandi, sectors, and related risks. And, more than others, innovation means exploring the changes of organised, economic and financial crimes, and in illicit markets, where technology plays an essential role.

To implement this vision, we need more data, more cooperation with law enforcement and judicial authorities, international organisations, national and international policy makers and enhanced cooperation with technology providers and data analytics companies. This is not something new to us. Our portfolio of international and national projects and partnerships shows that we have analysed the relationship between innovation and crime across different topics and methodologies. Our ambition is to push even further in this direction.

“Innovation and crime” connects our past to our vision of the future. We are grateful to the many people who contributed to Transcrime’s achievements, and we are looking forward to working with those who share this vision with us.