European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research - Call for papers! “Understanding Money Laundering: Empirical and Theoretical Insights into Offenders, Typologies, and Determinants of Criminal Behaviour”

The European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (EJCPR) welcomes submissions to a new special issue on money laundering, which will be Guest-Edited by Michele Riccardi (Transcrime – Università Cattolica, Italy) and Peter Reuter (University of Maryland, United States).

Important dates
September 30th, 2023: deadline for submissions
October 2023 – March 2024 (projected): peer-review process; online-first publication of accepted papers
Summer 2024 (projected): final publication of the special issue

Despite the centrality of anti-money laundering (AML) policies in the agenda of international organisations and national governments, knowledge of how money laundering (ML) works in practice is still scant. Most of the research conducted in this field to date has focused on AML regulations and countermeasures. The few works looking at ML threat, instead, attempted to producing estimates of criminal proceeds, on the one side, or to model international flows of illicit finance by adopting an economic perspective, on the other. Research on the behaviour and choices of ML offenders remains poor, limited to the analysis of few anecdotal case studies and typologies, while the contribution of criminological and sociological studies has been negligible.

This special issue addresses this gap, by collecting contributions—both theoretical and empirical research—which will look at how money laundering offenders behave, what schemes and methods they employ, what choices they undertake, and the nature of the determinants underpinning these choices. 

In particular, we welcome original, previously unpublished papers that address the following topics:

• The variety of ML practices and typologies, their distribution across space and their evolution over time;
• The influence of the nature of offenders and of predicate offences—e.g. organised crime, illicit trafficking, tax crimes, corruption—in determining ML choices and strategies;
• The contribution of criminological theories and models for understanding ML behaviour;
• The use of new data sources and innovative methods for improving the understanding of how ML works in practice; 
• The evolution of ML practices in an increasingly cyber and digitalized criminal environment, including the employment of virtual assets and currencies;
• The impact of the regulatory, social, economic, and criminal environment in determining ML choices and strategies;
• The benefits of a new empirically driven ML research perspective from the point of view of practitioners and policy-makers in the AML domain.

We encourage the submission of manuscripts from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to Criminology, Sociology, Ethnography, Economics, Finance, Political Science, International Relations, and Law. Both empirical and theoretical papers are welcome.

About the Guest Editors 

Michele Riccardi is Deputy Director and Senior Researcher at Transcrime and Adjunct Professor at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and at the University of Palermo, Italy. His research focuses mainly on organised crime, money laundering, and financial crime. In this domain, he has coordinated or contributed to numerous research projects, at national and international levels, and has authored numerous publications. He is member of the Experts’ group of the EU Supranational money laundering risk assessment (SNRA), of the Italian National ML risk assessment (NRA), and of the ARO – Asset Recovery Office of the European Commission. He is also a member of the United Nations working group in the measurement of illicit financial flows (SDG 16.4). He has been consulted by FATF/GAFI, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank on money laundering and risk assessment initiatives. Michele holds a PhD in Criminology and an MSc in Accounting and Financial Economics (with Distinction) from the University of Essex (UK) and an MA in International Relations (Cum Laude) from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy). 

Peter H. Reuter is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland (USA), where he is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and in the Department of Criminology. He was one of two awardees for the 2019 Stockholm Prize in Criminology. His early research focused on the organisation of illegal markets and resulted in the publication of Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand (MIT Press, 1983). He has co-authored five other books, mostly on drug policy. In recent years, Peter has also been publishing on money laundering control and on the flows of illicit funds from developing nations. He is co-author of Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight against Money Laundering (Institute for International Economics, 2004) with Ted Truman, and edited Draining Development: Controlling Flows of Illicit Funds from Developing Countries (World Bank 2012). In 2022 he published (with Joras Ferwerda) National Assessments of Money Laundering Risks. From 2007 through 2011, Peter served as the first president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. He has been a Senior Editor at the International Journal of Drug Policy since 2020. Peter received his PhD in Economics from Yale University (USA).

Submission guidelines

Manuscripts are due by September 30th, 2023.

Submitted manuscripts must be original and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Instructions on formatting rules, citation style, length, and other requirements are reported on the journal Web site. 
Manuscripts typically undergo double-blind peer review by independent referees, as per the journal’s standard evaluation process. The editors will base their final decisions on the relevance to the special issue, technical quality, innovative content, and originality of research approaches and results. Once the editorial review process is complete, accepted papers will be immediately published online on the journal’s Web site.
 

Submissions should be made online to the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research via Editorial Manager: http://www.editorialmanager.com/crim. To ensure your paper is considered for this special issue, reply “yes” when asked during submission whether it is intended for a special issue, and select the relevant title from the drop-down menu. You may also wish to mention the special issue in your cover letter.

Contacts

If you have any questions regarding the special issue, please do not hesitate to contact: 
•    Ernesto U. Savona – EJCPR Editor-In-Chief
•    Michele Riccardi – Special Issue Guest Editor
•    Peter H. Reuter – Special Issue Guest Editor
•    Alberto Aziani – EJCPR Associate Editor
•    Deborah Manzi – EJCPR Assistant Managing Editor
Please make sure to send your communication to ALL of the above-listed contacts: ernesto.savona@unicatt.it; michele.riccardi@unicatt.it; preuter@umd.edu; alberto.aziani@unicatt.it; Deborah.manzi@unicatt.it.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!