SHERLOC
Definition
UNODC Sharing Electronic Resources and Laws on Crime. The SHERLOC wildlife crime module indexes national laws, case law, and court outcomes on wildlife trafficking to support enforcement and prosecution.
- Full name
- Sharing Electronic Resources and Laws on Crime
- Publisher
- UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
- Wildlife module content
- National wildlife laws, case law, and court outcomes
- Primary users
- Prosecutors, law enforcement, and policy analysts working wildlife trafficking cases
Common questions
How does SHERLOC help an investigator building a wildlife trafficking case?+
It lets an investigator check what a given country's law actually criminalises, look up sentencing outcomes from prior prosecutions in comparable jurisdictions, and cite precedent when arguing for a particular charge or penalty, which is otherwise hard to research across dozens of national legal systems.
Is SHERLOC limited to wildlife crime?+
No. The wildlife trafficking module sits alongside other UNODC crime-type modules within SHERLOC, such as those covering firearms trafficking and organised crime more broadly; wildlife crime is one thematic slice of a larger database.
Related terms
- BOLD Systems
- Barcode of Life Data System (University of Guelph, Canada). Holds over 9 million COI reference barcodes linked to voucher specimens, with mandatory...
- CITES Trade Database
- Maintained by UNEP-WCMC, this holds records of all reported legal CITES-listed species trade. Used to detect permit fraud, unusual trade volumes, and...
- ElePhant
- A microsatellite (STR) reference database for African and Asian elephants, used to assign ivory seizures to continental and population-level origin.
- RhODIS
- Rhino DNA Index System. A national STR database for rhinoceros individuals maintained at the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, University of Pretoria. Used to...
- WildCAP
- Wildlife Contraband Analysis and Profiling database. Logs and cross-references wildlife seizure records across enforcement agencies to identify trafficking patterns.