A Criminological Awakening?
[Art] of the past has become victim to unprecedented pillage, theft, and destruction. Temples in obscure corners of the world are torn apart so that chunks of stone can be brought to museums in âcivilizedâ centres. Paintings and other artefacts are stolen from churches. An organised underground brings this loot to markets where buyers are willing to put aside their normal scruples: museums commission the pillage of archaeological sites. Otherwise honest businessmen buy without hesitation objects that can only have been stolen, tourists become smugglers, and legitimate auctioneers party to fraud. (Burnham 1975, pp. 13â14)
This appraisal of the nature of the market in cultural objects is not only rather gloomy but somewhat unique since its author seems to have been one of the first to identify and report upon both the international dimensions of this trade and the way in which it operates (see also Middlemas 1975). Writing in the mid-1970s, Bonnie Burnhamâs remarks were based on an intimate knowledge of museum and cultural affairs. Her involvement with the more tawdry aspects of these affairs began in 1971 when she commenced work for the International Council of Museums (ICOM) as special coordinator for a project called âEthics of Acquisitionâ, a campaign against the acquisition by museums of smuggled cultural objects and undocumented art (Burnham 1975, p. 15). Upon completion of the project, she felt obliged to produce a book describing the nature of the theft and pillage she had identified and the âart crisisâ it had produced.
Burnham did not claim to be a criminologist, but much of the research she conducted and the information she provided were of a type familiar to the discipline. Her research informants included police officials in major art centres, like Paris, New York and London, and she also made field trips to archaeological sites to see and hear first-hand how the illicit trade in antiquities was organised. Her research left her to question whether it was âindeed possible to buy art without getting involved in the vicious circle of pillage and destruction.â (Burnham 1975, p. 16).
This question is still one which has resonance several decades later when, as we shall see, criminologists have finally become far more actively involved in studying the illicit traffic of cultural objects as well as the more expansive forms of art crime linked to fraud, theft and associated offences. Historically, this involvement has really only acquired any momentum and depth since the closing years of the last century and, in particular, following the publication of John Conklinâs groundbreaking book on art crime (Conklin 1994).
As Conklin noted in a preface to his book, the âvolume focuses on a topic that has so far escaped the attention of criminologists: crime that involves works of artâ (Conklin 1994, p. ix). He defined art crime as âcriminally punishable acts that involve works of artâ (Conklin 1994, p. 3). Works of art, said Conklin, were objects included in the typology developed and used by the New York-based International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) to classify works of art that are reported stolen, namely â(1) Fine arts, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and sculptures; (2) Decorative arts; (3) Antiquities; (4) Ethnographic objects; (5) Oriental and Islamic art; and (6) Miscellaneous items, including armour, books, coins, and medalsâ (Conklin 1994, p. 18). The volume goes on to address a wide range of issues associated with art crime, including fakes, forgeries and fraud; the distribution of stolen art; and the looting and smuggling of antiquities. On the latter topic, Conklin acknowledges and draws quite heavily upon the earlier and pioneering work of Burnham.
Looking back now at the arena of criminological research and writing of the last century, it does seem rather remarkable that it did take so long for any scholarly work to emerge about art crime at large. Such crime clearly touches upon numbers of areas of considerable interest to criminologists, including property and white-collar offences, and organised criminal activity. It is also a form of crime which is associated with what has become an extremely lucrative global art industry (see, for instance, Thompson 2008, 2017; Thornton 2008). The transnational and wealth dimensions of the marketplace for works of art, including the types of items identified earlier in the quotation from Burnham, undoubtedly assists in explaining why the attention of both criminologists and criminal justice practitioners has finally begun to be focused on this topic.
As an illustration of this awakening of international interest, there has been a surge of activity in the United Nationâs Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) in combatting the illicit trade in art and antiquities (UN Economic and Social Council 2010). The CCPCJ, comprising 40 elected nations from among the members of the UN, oversees the programme and activities of the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The latter body has now recognised that the actions of illicit traffickers in art and antiquities have many similarities to those engaged in other organised transnational criminal activities, including drugs and arms trafficking. As such, they are also activities which might be better targeted by collaborative law enforcement efforts utilising the powers already given by an international instrument like the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC), agreed in 2000 in Palermo, Italy (see UNODC 2004). The CCPCJ has also given fresh consideration to the acceptance of a model treaty for the prevention of crimes that infringe on the cultural heritage of peoples in the form of movable propertyâa model treaty whose terms were first proposed nearly two decades ago at the 1990 Eighth UN Congress on the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders held in Havana, Cuba (UN Congress 1990, and reproduced in Appendix IV of Manacorda and Chappell 2011, pp. 237â242, together with other major treaties and documents relating to the protection of cultural heritage).
More recently, and with the still ongoing conflicts occurring in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, the UN Security Council has taken a direct interest in this subject area, passing resolutions condemning the wanton destruction and looting of cultural objects and sites and seeking prohibitions on the subsequent illicit export and sale of such objects on international markets (see UN Security Council Resolution 2199, 2015a, Resolution 2253, 2015b, Resolution 2347, 2017).
Criminologists have been involved in these UN-based activities, and have sought to offer advice and counsel regarding the approaches that might be taken to diminish the flourishing trade in cultural objects (see, for instance, Manacorda 2009). Even so, it must be acknowledged that the amount of research-based information available from criminological sources about the inner workings of this trade still remains quite restricted. For instance, the study of the illicit traffic in cultural heritage material, especially in Asia, is at a much earlier stage of development than studies of illicit markets involving drugs or the trade in women. This is not because the traffic itself is new. Indeed, one can easily argue that the plunder of antiquities predates such problems as the current issues with illicit drugs since it extends back through many centuries. The tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs were, for example, often plundered almost as soon as they had been sealed while successive conquerors from Greek and Roman times onwards consistently took home looted objects as trophies of war (Miles 2008).
What is still surprising is that in addition to the commentary on the plunder of cultural heritage being so slow to evolve, there has been almost no major criminological research grant money devoted to its study. Further, researchers in this area are not helped in any significant way by the existing criminal justice system in terms of knowledge or even data. Virtually, all art crime, including cultural heritage crime, belongs to the well-known âdark figureâ of criminality, that is, it resides beyond the reach of current crime statistics. While there have been some who have struggled to find some information from sources such as customs records (Fisman and Wei 2009), we still have little solid evidence about its true scale and dimensions (Passas and Bowman Proulx 2011; Durney 2013).
In addition, there are constraints imposed by âhuman ethicsâ procedures that limit approaches that can be taken by university researchers to study illicit traffic patterns (see Wilson 2000 for an interesting case of an academic going âundercoverâ). Investigative journalists who have been active in relation to this subject, such as Peter Watson (Watson and Todeschini 2006), have much greater freedom to ask questions that university researchers are not permitted to ask (e.g. of antiquities dealers who obviously are selling plundered objects). In Watsonâs case, he could, as a journalist with funding from television sources, actually entice major market players (including Sothebyâs) to engage in a range of illegal behaviour involving the smuggling and preparation of false export/import documents of proscribed cultural material (Watson 1998).
Finally, it also must be pointed out that there are situations where close investigation of this illicit traffic could become exceedingly dangerous. As is true of many forms of illicit traffic, there is much money to be made, especially in the source nations. Those making that money are often well connected to police or military authorities and take a dim view of interference in their lucrative activities.
The Handbook and the Interface Between the Worlds of Art and Crime
Having touched upon the context in which the subject of art crime has finally awakened the contemporary attention and interest of criminologists, we turn now to the raison dâĂȘtre for this Handbook and introduce its invited contributions. A handbook has been described as âa book that contains instructions or advice about how to do something, or the most important and useful information about a subjectâ (Cambridge Dictionary 2018). In this instance, our focus is principally upon the latter part of this definition, and in selecting the most important and useful topics and contributors to include in the Handb...