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Project Title:

FIDUCIA - New European Crimes and Trust-based Policy


PROJECT TITLE: FIDUCIA - New European Crimes and Trust-based Policy

COUNTRIES: EU Member States

OVERALL OBJECTIVE: To produce an innovative model of “trust-based” policy and related policy recommendations in relation to emerging forms of criminality, to be addressed to Member States and EU institutions. Specifically, the FIDUCIA project will shed light on a number of distinctively "new European” criminal acts that have emerged in the last decade as a consequence of technological developments and the increased mobility of populations across Europe.

ACTIVITIES:

Project activities were the following:

  • Sound management of the contractual, administrative, financial matters of the project;
  • State-of-the-art Crime Trends: synthesis of what can be said with confidence about crime trends in Europe, and will draw out the policy implications of this synthesis;
  • State-of-the-art Policies: “comparing and contrasting” different approaches to the regulation of criminal behaviour across Europe;
  • State-of-the-art Public Perceptions: reviewing what is currently known about fear of crime, trust in justice and punitive attitudes of citizens across Europe;
  • Development of a Model of Trust-based Policy: producing a model – or set of principles – for the application of ’trust-based’ policy to the regulation of new forms of European crimes;
  • Trafficking of Human Beings: case-studies of emerging forms of criminality across Europe concerned with trafficking, focusing specifically on the trafficking of people;
  • Trafficking of Goods: case-studies of emerging forms of criminality across Europe concerned with trafficking, focusing specifically on the trafficking of a wide range of goods;
  • Criminalization of Migration and Ethnic Minorities: investigating the construction a “risk category” by which irregular (im)migration and certain ethnic groups are linked with deviant behaviors and criminality across the EU;
  • Cybercrimes: exploring the legal, criminological and sociological aspects of cyber-crime as a new European-scale emergency;
  • Criteria for Criminalization: re-opening the difficult question of determining when to use - and not to use - the criminal law in the regulation of deviance and social problems, with specific regard to the adverse impact of ineffective over-criminalization on public perceptions of justice;
  • Trust and attitudes to justice “at home”: producing a comprehensive and accessible analysis of findings from the trust in justice module of Round 5 of the European Social Survey;
  • Trust and attitudes to justice “abroad”: investigating the dynamics of trust with regard to “new” crimes and crimes committed be-yond State borders;
  • Synthesis and policy proposals: intended not only to summarise project findings for academic purposes, but also to produce a raft of evidence-led policy proposals aimed at explaining in details when a trust-based policy can and cannot work, as well as in what terms, under what conditions, trust-based regulation is of value;
  • Validation: providing an organizational structure within which to locate the work of the External Expert Group (EEG) providing high-level validation of FIDUCIA scientific activities and results;
  • Dissemination: aimed at communicating the goals and results of the FIDUCIA project to the wide community of players and stakeholders interested in crime, deviance and criminal justice policy.

FUNDING AGENCY: European Commission

LEADER: University of Parma, Italy

PARTNERS: EPLO, the Centre for European Policy Studies, Center for the Study of Democracy, the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI), Birkbeck College of the University of London (BBK), Institute for Political Science Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IPS), London School of Economics and Political Sciences, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (MPI-CC), Teises Institutas, The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, Ankara Strategy Institute and Universidad de Salamanca

TIME FRAME: 2012-2015

Project tags: EU, crime, criminality