Looking Ahead to the Crimes to Come

With a cheery disposition married to a steadfast demeanour, Professor Matthew MANNING left Australia for Hong Kong hoping to make a real impact on crime. As the new head of CityU’s Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, he has great plans in mind.

“The reason I came to Hong Kong was I was always attracted to the prospect of developing a crime science programme within a university setting—and this will be the first crime science programme in the entire region,” beams Manning.

While he calls himself a crime scientist, Manning is also an applied microeconomist. Having attained an undergraduate degree in economics, for his master’s degree he turned his focus to criminology, before finally completing a PhD in both disciplines.

A Very Modern Crime Fighter
After more than two decades working across fields, Manning now has a unique skill set that allows him to come up with processes and strategies that allow criminal justice actors to respond to the rise of new and more complex crimes.

“My focus is purely on crime science at the moment with the goal to further develop theories and processes in this area, but also to develop tools that can be used by governments and industry to deal with some of these crimes,” he says.

The crimes that Manning refers to are future crimes—crimes that are committed because of the development of new technologies and the internet.

“The problem is when we have new technologies, criminals find ways to exploit those technologies,” he explains. “So my aim over the next five to ten years is not necessarily looking at what was done in the past or now, but looking to see what’s going to occur in the future. That’s what we call future crimes.”

As a future crime scholar, Manning has several objectives. The first is to research and uncover how individuals commit future crimes in the first place. From there, his work is about identifying the processes that can be adopted to make committing future crimes more difficult, riskier and less rewarding. And finally, he seeks to develop the tools that can help governments and industries to make strategic economic decisions that create efficiency and enhance the return on investment.

To Manning’s credit, he is the brainchild behind multiple economic tools that are being used by government agencies such as the College of Policing in the UK. Now he wants to create that sort of impact in Hong Kong and the region.

According to him, Hong Kong, like much of the world, is seeing a decline in traditional crimes, while unfortunately witnessing a rapid increase in internet-related crimes fuelled by new technologies.

In 2022, for example, Manning explained the rate of deception in Hong Kong has risen by 45% and now accounts for almost half of the overall number of crimes captured in the system. Common examples include shopping and investment scams. More sophisticated crimes can range from counterfeiting technology to using digital assets to laundering money, to name but a few.

“What we want to try and do is think of what are the implications of these new technologies,” says Manning, “and in what ways can we mitigate the potential vulnerabilities that are created as a result of new technologies.”

Coming to Grips with the Future
The new head of department notes that businesses and companies who create these technologies may not be aware or think of what the criminal implications are. Citing digital asset crimes as an example, Manning notes that it will continue to be a big issue in East Asia, especially in cities like Hong Kong where digital currencies are taking off.

“We currently do not have the processes in place to effectively deal with this issue but we always need to find solutions to potential issues that may arise, and come up with processes and tools that assist in making better decisions in terms of the efficiency and the detection of crime,” he says.

Manning reveals that a key aspect of fighting future crime is having efficiency. And in this regard, it is a major part of Manning’s research. Since criminal justice systems have only a limited amount of resources to deal with future crimes, having sufficient solutions and efficient options is key. Based on Manning’s research and experience, he has a number of recommendations. The first one being a focus on partnerships.

“The criminal justice system cannot do it all alone, it has to be done in partnerships,” he explains. “And universities are a great place to start because of their numerous assets. The next thing is to focus on breaking down silos between governments, industry, regulatory operators and even citizens within society.”

Another recommendation is to focus on crime detection and prevention utilising data.

“I believe that data is the new world,” Manning enthuses, “and within it lies the potential to reveal the placement of efficient prevention alternatives that makes crime more difficult and less rewarding; that makes it riskier and less excusable.”

Lastly, Manning notes that while technology may be a new vehicle for carrying out future crimes, crime fighters can also use the same technologies in the prevention and solving of the same crimes.

“With technology—things such as cameras, videos and social media—these generate massive amounts of volumes of data, and with artificial intelligence, we can use that to detect crimes that would otherwise go undetected,” he says.

In other words, by fully embracing the potential of AI, technology can help in responding to various security incidents in real time and automating processes like data collection and incident response—all of which helps to reduce the response time for organisations.

“We have to acknowledge that AI is powerful and we are at an exploratory stage,” Manning says, “so one of the things we need to do within universities is to understand how the technology can be used, and that’s another area we need to look at.”

The Impactful Synergy of Different Disciplines
Right now Manning is in the process of developing new tools that will use modern scientific techniques to assist governments and industries in making more efficient and effective decisions. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration.

“We need to go outside of the department and start working with others,” explains Manning. “We need to think about activities that bring different disciplines together with shared goals. I don’t want the department to be seen as one of disparate disciplines, but rather an integration of disciplines that are capable of addressing the problems I mentioned earlier.”

For this reason, Manning is currently working on some memorandums of understanding with other universities in the hopes of increasing connections to other world-leading institutions. At the same time, he wants to focus on strengthening the department’s core disciplines.

But ultimately, Manning wants the department to make an impact beyond the ivory towers of academia.

“One thing that attracted me to CityU was its determination to provide answers to real world problems,” he says, “and since there is no crime science department in this region, I want the University to be recognised and to be able to work with industry and governments to help solve some real-world problems.”