FIDUCIA-New European Crimes and Trust-based policy

Report of the findings of the FP7 EU funded project FIDUCIA - led by Prof. Stefano Maffei (UNiversity of Parma). FIDUCIA is a research project that will shed light on a number of distinctively “new European” criminal behaviours that have emerged in the last decade as a consequence of technology developments and the increased mobility of populations across Europe. Proposing new approaches to the regulation of such behaviours, the central idea behind the FIDUCIA project is that public trust (in latin, “fiducia”) in justice is critically important for social regulation, in that it leads to public acceptance of the legitimacy of institutions of justice, and thus to compliance with the law and cooperation with legal authorities. While being highly relevant to responding to “conventional” forms of criminality, trust and legitimacy may be of special significance in the light of “new crimes”.