What we know about “pig-butchering scams" (romance fraud) in China

According to one of the studies shared in today’s Crime Research Update

Jan 20, 2025

Hello! I'm Aaron Jacklin, and this is The Art of Explaining Crime, an independent newsletter that helps you think and write about crime.

Use this tip sheet to help you integrate the latest research into your work. It's an experimental directory of new crime research published by the academic journals that I monitor.

Today's directory contains links to studies published online in the last few days, including this one:

An Anatomy of ‘Pig Butchering Scams’: Chinese Victims’ and Police Officers’ Perspectives

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: victim, police, police officer
First author: Bing Han (University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK) [+1 other author]

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You’ll find today’s new research below, sorted by two broad categories: crime type and criminal justice/legal system stage. Research that doesn’t get sorted into those categories follows under “Unsorted Research.”

Research by type of crime

Violence

Exploring the value of queer archives in queer criminology: Interrogating narratives of incarceration and offending

Journal: Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal
Keywords: assault, offending, prison, incarceration, incarcerate, criminal justice, reform
First author: Matthew Ball (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

Heterosexual Partner Sexual Violence: Identifying Women Victims Through Questions on Sexual Coercion

Journal: Journal of Interpersonal Violence
Keywords: assault, aggression, violence, sexual violence, intimate partner violence, intimate partner, coercion, victim
First author: Gemma Pons-Salvador (University of Valencia, Spain) [+2 other authors]

Intelligence and the ‘Heart’ of the terrorist: managing the system of systems to discover and respond to tactics of fear

Journal: Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism
Keywords: terrorism, policing
First author: Andreas Velthuizen (Thabo Mbeki African School for Public and International Affairs, University of South Africa (Unisa), Pretoria, South Africa)

Trajectories of Justice Involved Youth: Changing Risk and Protective Factors for Violence

Journal: Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Keywords: violence, violent, recidivism
First author: A. T. H. Kleeven (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry & Psychosocial Care, Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) [+4 other authors]

Managing Masculinity When Growing up With a Violent Father: A Qualitative Study of Boys’ Experiences

Journal: Violence Against Women
Keywords: violence, violent
First author: Jane E. M. Callaghan (Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK) [+5 other authors]

Property

Stolen Valor? Examining the Associations Between Military Service, Data Breach Victimization, and Identity Theft Victimization

Journal: Crime & Delinquency
Keywords: theft, stolen, breach, identity theft, victim, victimization, policy
First author: Cooper A. Maher (Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA) [+1 other author]

Fraud as Legitimate Retribution for Colonial Injustice: Neutralization Techniques in Interviews with Police and Online Romance Fraud Offenders

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: fraud, offender, police
First author: Suleman Lazarus (University of Surrey, Guildford, UK) [+3 other authors]

Drugs

An exploration of desired abstinent and non-abstinent recovery outcomes among people who use methamphetamine

Journal: Harm Reduction Journal
Keywords: harm reduction, methamphetamine
First author: Alex Elswick [+7 other authors]

Digital Marketing Strategies Used to Promote Waterpipe Tobacco Among Retailers and Manufacturers

Journal: Substance Use & Misuse
Keywords: substance use, digital
First author: Eric K. Soule (Department of Health Education and Promotion, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA) [+9 other authors]

Future destinations: how people cured of hepatitis C using direct acting antiviral drugs progress in a new HCV-free world. A thematic analysis

Journal: Harm Reduction Journal
Keywords: drug use, harm reduction, drug
First author: Sarah R. Donaldson [+2 other authors]

White Collar

Fraud as Legitimate Retribution for Colonial Injustice: Neutralization Techniques in Interviews with Police and Online Romance Fraud Offenders

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: fraud, offender, police
First author: Suleman Lazarus (University of Surrey, Guildford, UK) [+3 other authors]

Organized

None found today.

Technology Facilitated

Digital Marketing Strategies Used to Promote Waterpipe Tobacco Among Retailers and Manufacturers

Stolen Valor? Examining the Associations Between Military Service, Data Breach Victimization, and Identity Theft Victimization

Technologies of the YouTuber self: digital vigilantism, masculinities and attention economy in neoliberal Japan

Journal: Global Crime
Keywords: digital
First author: Yoko Demelius (Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland) [+1 other author]

Research by criminal justice/legal system stage

Offending

Exploring the value of queer archives in queer criminology: Interrogating narratives of incarceration and offending

Fraud as Legitimate Retribution for Colonial Injustice: Neutralization Techniques in Interviews with Police and Online Romance Fraud Offenders

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: fraud, offender, police
First author: Suleman Lazarus (University of Surrey, Guildford, UK) [+3 other authors]

Teachers as Beacons of Hope: The Mediating Role of Future Expectations on the Association Between Student-Teacher Relationships and Justice-Involved Adolescents’ Grades and Offending

Journal: Crime & Delinquency
Keywords: offending, arrest
First author: Curtis D. Smith (University of California, Irvine, USA) [+4 other authors]

Victimization

Stolen Valor? Examining the Associations Between Military Service, Data Breach Victimization, and Identity Theft Victimization

Heterosexual Partner Sexual Violence: Identifying Women Victims Through Questions on Sexual Coercion

An Anatomy of ‘Pig Butchering Scams’: Chinese Victims’ and Police Officers’ Perspectives

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: victim, police, police officer
First author: Bing Han (University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK) [+1 other author]

Policing

Where’s the help when you need it? Examining accessibility to mental health resources among law enforcement

Journal: Police Practice and Research
Keywords: police, law enforcement, law
First author: Stacey Clifton (Stacey Clifton Department of Criminal Justice Radford, Radford University, Virginia, USA) [+1 other author]

An Anatomy of ‘Pig Butchering Scams’: Chinese Victims’ and Police Officers’ Perspectives

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: victim, police, police officer
First author: Bing Han (University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK) [+1 other author]

Fraud as Legitimate Retribution for Colonial Injustice: Neutralization Techniques in Interviews with Police and Online Romance Fraud Offenders

Journal: Deviant Behavior
Keywords: fraud, offender, police
First author: Suleman Lazarus (University of Surrey, Guildford, UK) [+3 other authors]

Intelligence and the ‘Heart’ of the terrorist: managing the system of systems to discover and respond to tactics of fear

Non-graduate entry a retrograde step for the police professionalisation agenda?

Journal: The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles
Keywords: police, policing, probation
First author: John McCanney (Institute of Health, University of Cumbria, Carlisle, UK) [+1 other author]

Teachers as Beacons of Hope: The Mediating Role of Future Expectations on the Association Between Student-Teacher Relationships and Justice-Involved Adolescents’ Grades and Offending

Journal: Crime & Delinquency
Keywords: offending, arrest
First author: Curtis D. Smith (University of California, Irvine, USA) [+4 other authors]

Courts

Appeals against detention in conditions of excessive security: an analysis of cases from medium secure units in Scotland

Journal: The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology
Keywords: appeal, detention
First author: Daniel M Bennett (University of Aberdeen; Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, NHS, Grampian, Scotland) [+8 other authors]

Corrections

Exploring the value of queer archives in queer criminology: Interrogating narratives of incarceration and offending

Non-graduate entry a retrograde step for the police professionalisation agenda?

Trajectories of Justice Involved Youth: Changing Risk and Protective Factors for Violence

Living through extended liminality: Reintegration experiences of génocidaire ex-prisoners in Rwanda

Journal: Punishment & Society
Keywords: prison, release, punishment, law
First author: Theoneste Rutayisire (Theoneste Gatenga Kicukiro, Kigali-City, Rwanda) [+4 other authors]

Appeals against detention in conditions of excessive security: an analysis of cases from medium secure units in Scotland

Public Policy

Exploring the value of queer archives in queer criminology: Interrogating narratives of incarceration and offending

Where’s the help when you need it? Examining accessibility to mental health resources among law enforcement

Stolen Valor? Examining the Associations Between Military Service, Data Breach Victimization, and Identity Theft Victimization

Supplemental Material for The State of Open Science in the Field of Psychology and Law

Journal: Law and Human Behavior
Keywords: law
First author:

Living through extended liminality: Reintegration experiences of génocidaire ex-prisoners in Rwanda

Journal: Punishment & Society
Keywords: prison, release, punishment, law
First author: Theoneste Rutayisire (Theoneste Gatenga Kicukiro, Kigali-City, Rwanda) [+4 other authors]

Unsorted Research

The following research doesn't appear to mention any of the terms my code searches for in order to sort research by crime type.

Now you see it, now you don’t: social systematic observation of physical disorder using Google Street View

Journal: Journal of Experimental Criminology
Keywords: -
First author: Lisa M. Pierotte [+2 other authors]

What next for tests of the situational model of Situational Action Theory? Recommendations from a systematic review

Journal: European Journal of Criminology
Keywords: -
First author: Beth Hardie (University of Cambridge, UK; National Coalition of Independent Scholars (NCIS), UK) [+1 other author]

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Crime Research Update and Five Studies About are the output of my research discovery system.

What we know about “pig-butchering scams" (romance fraud) in China

According to one of the studies shared in today’s Crime Research Update

Research by type of crime

Violence

Property

Drugs

White Collar

Organized

Technology Facilitated

Research by criminal justice/legal system stage

Offending

Victimization

Policing

Courts

Corrections

Public Policy

Unsorted Research

Discussion about this post