Preventing Illegal Enterprise in the Norwegian Fisheries Industry

Summary

Unreported fishing in Norwegian cod fisheries has been a concern for years. The scope is unknown, but it is a recognised challenge that unregistered fish are being added to the legal supply. Despite strict regulations, prevention is complex, and ample opportunities exist for misreporting. We analyse how prevention mechanisms in Norwegian fisheries address the enterprise environment that affects industry actors’ behaviour and misreporting practices by applying an integrated framework of combining the enterprise model with situational crime prevention (SCP). Implemented prevention mechanisms are organised according to the five opportunity-reducing strategies in the SCP model and linked to the enterprise dimensions of supply, demand, competition, and regulation. Based on this, we discuss why the existing prevention strategies are (in)sufficient for preventing unreported fishing. The study shows that the prevention mechanisms mainly address supply and regulation dimensions. Despite their significant role in driving and facilitating unreported fishing, less emphasis is given to market and competition. The analysis reveals the limitations of the heavy reliance of the prevention on fisheries resource control, as many of the motivating conditions are outside the realm of the control authorities. To enhance the prevention of fisheries crime, the authorities should expand the perspective to encompass contextual challenges such as competitive conditions and low profitability. The framework proves helpful for analysing fisheries crime prevention, offering insights into addressing food fraud in legitimate supply chains, but the analysis would have benefited from a more apparent distinction between the different conditions that influence criminal behaviour.