A dataset of the crackdown on cross-border wildlife crimes in China, 2014-2020

Wildlife crimes that involve smuggling threaten national security and biodiversity, cause regional conflicts, and hinder economic development, especially in developing countries with abundant wildlife resources. Over the past few decades, significant headway has been made in combating wildlife smuggling and the related illegal domestic trade in China. Previous studies on the wildlife smuggling trade were mostly based on customs punishment and confiscation data. From the China Judgments Online website, we retrieved cases related to cross-border wildlife and wildlife products smuggling from 2014 to 2020. A total of 510 available cases and 927 records for more than 110 species were registered. We thoroughly studied each judgment and ruling file to extract information on cases, defendants, species, sentences, and origins and destinations of wildlife and wildlife products. Furthermore, frequency of origin-destination place occurrences and spatial patterns of cross-border wildlife crime in Ch..., Data source: The China Judgments Online (CJO) website (https://wenshu.court.gov.cn) provides electronic public access to court records. In 2010, 2013, and 2016, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated and revised the provisions on the publication of judicial documents by people’s courts on the Internet, and the publication of judicial documents has become the responsibility and obligation of courts at all levels (Wu, 2022). Since January 1, 2014, judgment documents must be published on CJO within seven days of their enforcement, and cannot be amended, replaced or revoked without court authority. Up to now, the CJO has become an important channel for the publication of judgments documents.
 
Data collection: The collection time of this dataset is up to September 2021. We searched for “wildlife” and “smuggling” on the China referee’s website. Then, we screened these judgment documents according to the following criteria: (I) the full text can be accessed, and the case involves the crimes o...,