Editorial: Prison is not a viable pursue strategy in financial crime; the “serious violence duty” can help improve prevent strategies
| Date | 25 October 2024 |
| Pages | 981-984 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JMLC-10-2024-208 |
| Published date | 25 October 2024 |
| Author | Viv Ellis |
Editorial: Prison is not a viable
pursue strategy in financial crime;
the “serious violence duty”can help
improve prevent strategies
On page 1 of the original 1829 “Metropolitan Police –Instructions to Police Officers”it
reads “It should be understood, at the outset, that the principal object to be attained is ‘the
Prevention of Crime’. To this great end every effort of the Policeis to be directed”.(
Moskos,
2011); prevention has been a fundamental principle since the very beginning of policing.
However, the prison population of England and Wales has quadrupled in size since 1900 to
around 88,000 today, whilst the adult population has only just over doubled in that time.
Between 1901 and 2021, the prisonpopulation aged 15 and over increased from 86 prisoners
per 100,000 people to 159 per 100,000 (Sturge,2024). Projections indicate the situation is set
to worsen, with the prison population for England and Wales continuing to grow to between
95,100 and 114,200 by 2027, at a current cost of £51,108 per prison place (Sturge, 2024).
Clearly,we have so far failed in this “principal object”of prevention.
However, the driver of increasing prison populations is not related to financial crime.
Whilst fraud is now widely accepted as the most common crime type, accountingfor over
40% of all crimes in England and Wales, fraud offences are the lowest prison population
group with just 642 incarcerations (25 July 2024). Fraud accounts for less than 1% of the
prison population, with Violence and sexual offences accounting for65%, Drug offences
accounting for 17%, and theft accountingfor 9% (Ministry of Justice, 2024). This low prison
population for fraud offences is unsurprising given no effective “Pursue”strategies by
politicians or law enforcement. In their report “Fraud: Time to Choose”, Her Majesty’s
Inspector of Constabulary (2019)found in one police force area, 96% of fraud cases referred
to them for investigation fromthe National Fraud Intelligence Bureau resulted in “no further
action”, despite good evidence on the reports, including some with named suspects. In
February 2022, then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, sustained fraud’s low priority
when he claimed crime had fallen by 14% in the twoyear period between September 2019
and September 2021. This claim was only achievable by removing all fraud and computer
misuse crimes from the calculations. Removal of these offences distorted the statistics by
28%, with crime actually increasingby 14% over the period (Norgrove, 2022); fraud by false
representation? Then Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, supported Boris Johnson
removing fraud from crimestatistics, saying fraud was not a “crime that people experience in
their day-to-day lives”(Haley, 2022). This laissez-faire attitude to fraud has arguably led to
the “lost decade”of stagnation in counter-fraud policy described by Helena Wood (2024)
following 2010.
Though Wood(2024) suggests morehas been doneto counter fraud inthe past 12 months
than in the past 12 years,systemic capacity does not exist to viably pursue fraud and financial
crime to achieve prosecution and imprisonment. Clearly, alternative, effective Prevent
measures are necessary.
In looking for effective Prevent measures, a previous Editorial, Yehuda Shaffer (Shaffer,
2024) identifies one of the “preventative”achievements by the Financial Action TaskForce,
that it is now harder for criminals to opena bank account. But criminals are like water, when
Journal of Money
Laundering
Control
981
Journalof Money Laundering
Control
Vol.27 No. 6, 2024
pp. 981-984
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1368-5201
DOI 10.1108/JMLC-10-2024-208
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