Report(s) and Book review(s)_
The Eighth Biennial Conference on Policing
in Central and Eastern
Europe: Social Control of Unconventional Deviance, September 2010
The Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security at The University of Maribor hosted the Eighth Biennial Conference on Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Social Control of Unconventional Deviance in Ljubljana, between 22nd and 24th September 2010. The conference consisted of 145 contributions of presentations from authors from 20 countries.
Presented papers covered very diverse areas. The participants were able to choose among environmental threats and criminality, intelligence as a tool for providing safety and security, crisis and risk management, organised crime, cyber crime, violence, criminal investigation, international dimensions of policing, responses to crime and many other topics.
The formal opening of the conference began with an introductory speech from Andrej Sotlar, the chairman of the organizing committee, who welcomed all participants and guests, presented the objectives and purpose of the conference, and expressed satisfaction with the fact that the conference has never before hosted such a large number of contributions and authors. Katarina Kresal, Minister of the Interior, in her ceremonial speech stressed the importance of ensuring security. She said that this year's papers and references of their authors reaffirm that scientific and professional findings concerning security factors and policing are an indispensable part of wise and efficient security policy. The Minister emphasized, that, "Slovenia is situated at the important geographic crossroads between South Eastern, Central and Eastern Europe. The trade and transport routes across Slovenia are also used by organised crime groups dealing with trafficking of human beings and illegal goods, the most well-known being the Balkan Route. Its position makes Slovenia even more aware of the significance of international police cooperation, and it is therefore appropriate that we host the now traditional international Conferences on Policing in Central and Eastern Europe." She ended her speech with the conclusion that the conference is also a good opportunity to deepen the interaction between science and profession, she congratulated the organizers and wished them a successful conference.
On behalf of the Rector of the University of Maribor, Vice-Chancellor Marko Marhl greeted the audience. He expressed surprise at the scope and content of _the conference, which brings together experts from all parts of the world. He
458
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 458	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
highlighted the importance of such conferences, which represent internationally recognizable achievements and connect Slovenia with other countries and facilitate the flow of knowledge and the birth of new ideas and solutions.
Representatives of other Conference partners also addressed the participants -Daniel Ventre, representative of GERN1, Edmund F. McGarrell from Michigan State University2 and Charles B. Fields from Eastern Kentucky University3 expressed their appreciation and enthusiasm for the conference and stressed the importance of cooperation between the institutions. At the end of the opening the dean of the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Gorazd Mesko, gave speech. He said that the scope of the conference Policing and Central and Eastern Europe since its launch in November 1996 has been increasing each year and presented issues have multiplied. He presented a brief history and development of the faculty, from School of Internal Affairs to today's Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, which in addition to undergraduate offers also second- and third-degree programmes based on the models of leading American and British universities. He expressed his pleasure of the success of Biennial Conference, and wished all participants an enjoyable and successful conference with many fruitful discussions and useful solutions4.
At the first plenary session, Michael Levi highlighted the importance of public-private partnership in the fight against financial crime and warned about excessive emphasizing of the police as the main and only subject in the prevention of financial crime.
Tim Hope also spoke about the police cooperation with other institutions and in particular with the community. He opened the discussion on whether the police actually did succeed in preventing crime, which led to the next question - who, if anyone, is truly successful at crime prevention.
Gorazd Mesko presented a paper about deviance in science, where he outlined the challenges and dilemmas that researchers are facing, being exposed to competition for the publication and increasingly higher standards for researchers. Besides professionalism, he also stressed the importance of values, which should be the cornerstone of science and scientific research.
1	GERN - Groupe Européen de Recherches sur les Normativités, France.
2	Michigan State University, USA.
3	Eastern Kentucky University, College of Justice & Safety, USA. Charles B. Fields gave the dean of FCJS a special award - title of Kentucky Colonel, the highest honour awarded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, for the ten-year cooperation with EKU, teaching staff exchange, postgraduate study cooperation and co-organizing of Conference Policing in Central and Eastern Europe from 2004 on.
4	Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security granted the Director General of Police, Janko Gorsek, the award to the graduate with a successful career and thanked him for important contribution to the reputation of the Faculty and its mission, which is consolidating and developing criminal justice and security as a scientific and professional field. Miss Anja Oblak was granted the annual award for student research achievements of the FCJS. She has shown enormous motivation and critical thinking in testing the hypotheses of forensic science in her empirical final thesis titled "Use of the BackTrack™ Suite Software
for the determination of the point of origin of bloodstains".	_
459
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 459	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
Cyber crime was the common thread of the second plenary session, where Daniel Ventre and Igor Bernik presented their findings and initiate a lively discussion on whether the majority of cyber threats is real or only imagined and produced with the aim of increasing security concerns for the interest of the private security industry. The discussion led to the problems of distinguishing between terrorism and activism and issues of crime scene and jurisdiction of the law enforcement agencies in cases of cyber crime, since the cyber attack is never directed to the target on the internet, but always to an individual or organization and his intellectual mind in the real world.
On the next plenary session, Petrus C. van Duyne talked about the loose definitions of organized crime and its actors, and wondered who in the context of organized crime is actually threatening who and what with. An interesting debate took place regarding the research related to organized crime, where the key dilemma of how to research was exposed - whether in accordance with mainstream or critically.
The last plenary lecture was put to the end as the final part of the conference. Bojan Dobovsek as well as Antonija Petricusic highlighted the interaction of formal and informal activities or legal and illegal businesses in modern society. In their paper Kregar and Petricusic stressed that we are faced with the trend of crime becoming business activity and many business activities being anything but legal and containing signs of criminal activity. Bojan Dobovsek added that trends of this type are the most notable in the tourism and civil engineering, where the profits of transnational organized crime flow, for the purpose of money laundering in the form of investments in legitimate business. Especially in the territory of Central and Eastern Europe a saying holds true: "Ask me anything, just do not ask me where my first million came from." Lecturers and participants expressed the similar view and pointed out that the mechanism of reversed burden of proof in the process of property seizure proved to be the most effective method in the fight against organized crime.
Within three days of the conference, eight panel lectures were followed by 18 sections, where 86 contributions and one workshop on environmental crime and green criminology were presented. As a part of the conference Policing in Central and Eastern Europe the third working meeting of the eSEC5 project partners6 was held. Partners evaluated achieved objectives of the establishment and implementation of internet database, where the experts working in the field of security throughout the European Union, can store and exchange their knowledge, experience and results.
In the section on green criminology and environmental threats an interesting discussion took place, about the destruction of the environment mostly being unique act with permanent consequences. Roberto Gamboa's study of Portuguese forest fires in the period 2007-2009 showed a very high proportion of preplaned and intentional fires. As an analysis of criminological theories in the field of
5	eSEC - Competency Based e-portal of Security and Safety Engineering.
6	Partners of the eSEC are: University of Zilina, Slovak Republic; University of Maribor, Slovenia; Tomas Bata University in Zlmu, Czech Republic; University di Messina, Italy;
_ Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal and SudParis University, France.
460
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 460	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
environmental crime have already shown, all paths lead to intentional human behaviour, in order to achieve profit or revenge, and destruction of social groups in a given area. A testimony to the latter is the contribution of Daniel Ruiz about ecocide in the swamps of Mesopotamia, where supporters of Saddam Hussein planned to destroy the inhabitants, by intentionally draining the marshes of Mesopotamia, which were the cradle of human civilization thousands of years ago.
The authors pointed out that the media in this and other environmental crime cases have not played its role as representatives of the truth and informing the public. It is still very often, that environmental crime is not interesting enough for the media, if it does not result in massive destruction or human casualties.
In the section on crisis and risk management, the Slovak colleagues presented their school system with emphasis on education in the field of civil protection. Authors of the paper on evaluation systems to protect critical national infrastructure concluded by stating the importance of establishing a common European methodology on the quantitative approach to protecting critical infrastructure. Findings of the research about information security in risk management system of Slovenian enterprises were presented.
Authors of papers in the section on organized crime presented very interesting aspects and results of the studies, among which the most notable was the conclusion that even organized crime has not managed to avoid the influence of economic crisis, resulting in criminal bosses suffering some losses on their financial investments. However, it is recognize in different countries that it is still very difficult to track the money flows of organized criminal groups, because these procedures are complex and often require the use of special investigative techniques and resources. Experts are faced with the problem of intermixing of legitimate and illicit financial flows, since all over the world is quite impossible to determine whether individual assets come from legal or illegal sources. In the EU this ratio varies between 20 and 50 percent.
In section on violence Macedonian colleagues, Vesna Stojkovska and Natasha Jovanova introduced prevention of violence in schools in Macedonia, an interesting discussion on security at football matches was opened by the presentation regarding public order in Austria, the authors of the two contributions dealt with violence at the work place, namely the perception of workplace violence and aggression among police officers as well as the reasons and consequences of different forms of psychological violence in Slovenia in general.
The section on criminal investigation presented different aspects and important roles of a criminal investigation as such, especially in emergency situations such as the undercover work, the examples of suicidal terrorist bombing attacks and the investigation of organized crime of drug trafficking, which have been highlighted by Zeljko Karas, Milan Zarkovic and Matthew Bacon. Darko Maver pointed out the important role of criminal investigation as a science about investigating conventional and unconventional deviance and emphasized the need to develop a criminal investigation as a scientific discipline in the Slovenian territory. In the last presentation Matija Mastnak has placed himself in the role of investigative journalist and enumerated the advantages of cooperation between criminal investigators and investigative journalists. In doing so, he agreed with his colleagues that both
461
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 461	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
parties, investigators and journalists, must ensure the protection of personal data. In the last decade the investigative journalists have to look after their own security all round the world, as disclosure of political scandals and illegal business often endanger their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.
The next section covered diverse perspectives of increasingly frequent non-conventional forms of deviance and the presented papers showed the examples of practice in Slovenia. First, the results of a pilot study of art crime court cases in Slovenia were presented to the participants. Furthermore, the authors of the paper of tax fraud have presented the state of the investigation and prevention of tax frauds in Slovenia and the European Union. After that two very close connected presentations about abuse of credit and bank cards and analysis of various forms of criminality in hotels and motels in Slovenia followed. The section ended with a presentation of the overview of surveys and research results about unconventional deviance in the Slovenian criminological research.
In the section on victimological perspective of policing, which was also the last section of the first day, the presentations of the views of police officers about the treatment of crime victims, about police officers and traumatic events, especially suicides among police officers took place. Furthermore, the paper presentation on supervising children in the United Kingdom has triggered a debate about dilemma 'privacy - control' and raised a thinking about the possible violations of children's rights. At the end, American colleagues presented the successful police program for dealing with mentally ill persons.
In the first section of the second day of the conference, entitled Multidisciplinary issues, four different issues from four different countries were presented. In the first presented paper the special attention was focused on the question about preventive work in the field of drug abuse. Andrej Kirbis has spoken about substance abuse among students in eight post-Yugoslav entities. His basic emphasis was that modernization influences also on substance abuse among youth. Modern, developed societies have bigger problems with substance abuse, where on the other side societies with high respect of tradition and dominant traditional values are facing fewer problems connected to substance abuse. Edmund McGarrell presented the drug market intervention (DMI) approach used in some cities in USA. DMI is a strategic problem-solving initiative aimed at permanently closing down open-air drug markets. It focuses on police powers and intense cooperation with community. The strategy targets of individual drug markets are using focused deterrence with transformational elements. The most violent offenders are targeted and prosecuted as examples. The strategy then targets low-level offenders and stages an intervention with families and community leaders. Offenders are given the option to straighten up or face lengthy prison sentences and are provided assistance in locating employment, housing, transportation, health care, and access to other social services. In the second part of section on multidisciplinary issues, Natasha Jovanova presented discovered characteristics of fear of crime in Skopje and consequences among the population. At the end, Anelia Illiva with the paper about the theory of communication risk in the fight against crime started a discussion about new paradigm in the field of crime prevention and suppression.
462
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 462	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
Authors of the presented papers in the section on corruption and other participants agreed that the improperly obtained benefits and directly or indirectly promised, offered, given, required or expected benefits in return is still huge and somewhere still growing safety issue that erodes the rule of law. Both, state and international organizations such as Europol, Interpol, the OECD7 and GRECO8 play an important role in discovering and disclosing these various forms of institutionalized organized crime, particularly corruption.
In the third section about violence, authors present the characteristics of perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse of children in Slovenia, the findings of international research on violence against women, children and young people, and hate crime in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. The last contribution has triggered a debate about who are the victims and who are the perpetrators and what are the possible solutions, which ultimately led to the conclusion that the reconciliation and interest for it to happen, comes mainly from the people themselves. Most of the mechanisms of restorative justice are in fact introduced by the national authorities on the initiative or the support of international institutions, but as is known in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we talk about the society with a high demand for justice, but, on the other side, with low capability to provide it.
In the section on the police, police work and integrity has been pointed out that when dealing with the police officers, we are facing a particular subculture, where specific rules of silence, hierarchies and disciplinary measures within the group themselves are obeyed. The authors of presented papers have highlighted the crucial role of the police organizational culture and types of leadership in the police organization, which often help to control the deviance within the police forces and prevent violent behaviour against citizens in police procedures. In the process of achieving a successful management of the department within the police organization, education of police officers and their leaders is very important, especially the experience of the latter, who should be a good example to their subordinates.
The final day of the conference was highlighted with the police and security topics. In the section on policing, social control and provision on safety the role of police and army to ensure security of citizens have been highlighted. Authors of the presented papers discussed various aspects of the provision of safety. They concluded that when talking about the safety 'climate' or the public opinion is not important how to provide the safety but what or which the factors of compromising of the safety are.
Surprisingly, the responses to criminality, as one of the factors of compromising safety, were the topic of the next section. Aleksander Jevšek highlighted the importance and the role of the newly established National Bureau of Investigation within the Slovenian police. David T. Masiloane presented a study about the militarization of police in South Africa, which has resulted as a successful response to the problem of corruption within police ranks, which has reached all the way to the top, and was also positively accepted by the public. The study performed
7	OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
8	GRECO - Groups of States Against Corruption	_
463
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 463	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
and presented by Radomir Zekavica and colleagues from Serbia, showed that the police ethics and integrity in the field of human rights in police procedures with the citizens in Belgrade is very low.
The section on international dimensions of policing and provision of security focused on the provision and maintenance of peace, which is still the most urgent issue of contemporary society. In addition to the role of NATO and the instruments of police cooperation in South East Europe, the participants learned a great deal of contradictions between theory and practice in peace-keeping missions and the consequences of stress that members of international forces are dealing with. The politics of ensuring peace is still an ongoing issue in the territory of former Yugoslavia.
The section multidisciplinary aspects offered very diverse, but equally important overview of forms of security threats. The authors presented the problems of abuse of personal data protection by the police, the threat of consumers from unfair or excessive food additives in foods, the role of green criminology and the use of radar imagery of the territory in response to environmental threats to security.
The topic of the last section was punishment and security. All three presented studies confirmed that the punishment does not have the desired effect if is not executed quickly and as soon as possible after the offense. In order to achieve the desired deterrent-preventive effects of punishment is by opinion of the authors of presented papers necessary to complete and implement a consistent security policy and criminal investigation, which include the area of crime prevention. But of course, it all depends on a coordinated and thorough work of law enforcement and the judiciary.
The Eighth biennial conference on Policing in Central and Eastern Europe has exceeded all expectations and set goals. During all three days of the conference the formal and informal exchange of views, ideas, experiences, concepts and findings of the research of many scientists, researchers and experts from East and West in the broad field of criminal justice and other safety sciences took place. In addition, graduate students and assistants were able to try out in a safe environment in presentations and discussions, and these ways also gained a valuable experience for their personal and professional growth. The conference highlighted new ideas, theories, methods and findings in many research and professional and job-related areas of social control of the conventional and unconventional deviance. The published book of abstracts entitled Conference Proceedings has the SSCI citation index (Criminology & Penology). Furthermore, after the conference the publication of peer-reviewed contributions will be published.
Throughout the conference the idea of the importance of cooperation between institutions, in which they have been at the forefront of collaborative research projects and contextualization of knowledge and the necessity of linking theory with practice, to avoid the current very low level of integration or even exclusion from the academic environment of social control practices with a common goal identification of contemporary forms of threats and provide security, has dominated. The latter purpose of linking academia with practice and emphasise of the importance of exchanging knowledge and experience on both sides will
464
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 464	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41

Report(s) and Book review(s)	
also be one of the objectives of the international conference Criminalistics/Criminal investigation in Europe: State of the Art and Challenges for the Future, the next International Conference of the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, to be held on 22nd and 23rd September 2011 in Ljubljana.
Maja Jere, Katja Eman, Ales Bucar Rucman
465
VS_Notranjost_2010_04.indd 465	■{©}■	27.12.2010 11:22:41