On Sunday October 19, criminals managed to steal eight pieces of extremely valuable jewellery from the Louvre Museum’s Gallery of Apollo, in Paris. The robbery highlights long-standing issues for criminology in the field of cultural heritage, as museum security has to address traditional and emerging threats as well as a range of symbolic visions and criminal dynamics. This means that, when a security breach occurs, the costs are felt on many different levels.
From a security point of view, there are five key ideas that can help us understand what the flaws were in the Louvre, as well as how, and why, criminals target museums.
