A Global Analysis from UNICRI’s Crime and Justice Trends Study

Criminal justice systems are confronting a changing crime landscape, characterized by growing connections across borders and digital environments. Globalization, shifting trade patterns, conflict, technological innovations and environmental pressures have altered the conditions in which crime occurs, creating new opportunities for criminal actors and new challenges for the institutions responsible for preventing, investigating and responding to crime. At the same time, while some more conventional non-transnational forms of crime have declined in many regions, other transnational, interconnected and technologically enabled forms have taken on greater prominence, creating a global picture in which crime is evolving in different directions and at different speeds. Understanding these shifts is essential to understanding crime and justice in a changing world.

From regional trends to a global picture

This report, Crime and Justice in a Changing World, forms part of UNICRI’s Crime and Justice Trends Study, a research initiative launched in 2025 to better understand how crime and criminal justice are evolving across and within regions. The Study comprises a series of nine regional analytical reports – Eastern and Southern Africa; Western and Middle Africa; Northern Africa and Western Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Northern America; Central and Southern Asia; Oceania; Europe; and Eastern and South-eastern Asia – and this global report, providing a comparative analysis of evolving patterns and developments in crime and criminal justice. 

Rather than looking at regions in isolation, the Study looks at where experiences converge, where they differ, and how developments in one part of the world connect with those elsewhere. It considers trends in crime and criminal justice alongside five issues that cut across regions: conflict, crime and terrorism; environment and crime; urbanization; gender-based violence; and youth. This global report brings together the findings from within and across the nine regions to identify broader patterns and connections in how crime and criminal justice are evolving worldwide.

This global analysis marks the first publication from the Crime and Justice Trends Study. The nine companion regional studies will be published progressively through the end of 2026, providing a more detailed examination of the trends, developments and cross-cutting issues identified in each region.

Crime across borders, markets and technologies

Several developments stand out. Organized criminal networks are becoming more diversified and characterized by ‘polycriminality,’  moving between different illicit activities that are increasingly intertwined with legitimate economic activity. Technology is lowering barriers to entry for some forms of crime and allowing criminal operations to reach victims on an unprecedented scale. Trade routes, supply chains and poorly regulated economic spaces can provide opportunities for illicit activity, while the distinction between licit and illicit markets is becoming harder to draw. At the same time, criminal justice systems are themselves being transformed by technology, while facing challenges of capacity, oversight and international cooperation, as well as questions about the balance between security responses, the rule of law and human rights.

An increasingly interconnected landscape

These developments point to global crime landscape that is increasingly complex and interconnected. Criminal activity can adapt rapidly to new technologies, markets and regulatory environments, while institutions and cooperation mechanisms often move more slowly. Understanding these connections is therefore essential.

By bringing regional evidence into a common global frame, this global report – together with its nine companion regional studies – is intended to support that understanding. It does not seek to predict what crime will look like in the years ahead. Rather, it identifies developments already reshaping crime and criminal justice, and provides a basis for considering how policy, institutions and international cooperation may need to adapt in response.