Trends in Organized Crime最新文献

Abstract

This article presents the preliminary results of a qualitative exploratory study conducted between 2021 and 2023. This study was based on in-depth interviews with law enforcement agents and experts in gender and security, and document analysis. Using examples from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, we aimed to analyze how stereotypes can shape gender bias, particularly regarding how women in middle and high-ranking positions in organized crime in the Americas outmaneuver law enforcement. We argue that women stereotypes, and gender bias may influence the capability of law enforcement agencies to prosecute and condemn Latin American women in middle and high-ranking positions in criminal organizations. Gender bias favors women, particularly in their perpetrators’ role, and has become a source of power, showing that Latin American women have agency, and act strategically within criminal organizations, since they are potentially less suspicious in the eyes of law enforcement agencies. This research contributes to shedding light on the currently existing blind spot on the role of Latin American women in organized crime in the Americas, and has policy implications. It is useful in fostering the implementation of state policies capable of including non-stereotypical women's role in organized crime.

Much of the existing research on organized crime in Africa has emphasised its development and proliferation from state and security perspectives. Such research often relies upon inflated facts for captivating public attention, is fuelled by sensationalist media reports and draws from conceptualisations that give an incomplete picture of the significance of illicit activities, both for the state and their role in enabling and sustaining people’s livelihoods. In contrast, this special issue proposes that more empirical research and analysis is needed to reveal the disjunctures between state and on-the-ground perceptions. Greater attention to a bottom-up vision of illicit activities can demonstrate how defining and understanding these practices through such binary terms as legal/illegal does not necessarily indicate how those engaged in them perceive them. Through bringing together a range of contributions from different disciplinary, theoretical and empirical perspectives, this special issue explores the space between official, policy-driven narratives of crime and the realities of the everyday nature of these practices, in a bid to rethink and challenge the ‘organized crime’ lens through which these activities are increasingly framed.

The illicit trading of cultural goods (ITCG) has increasingly drawn the attention of international community in the last two decades. The vehement interconnections between the ITCG and other notorious global threats, such as organised crime (OC), money laundering (ML), and the financing of terrorism (FT), are well documented. Turkey, as one of the prominent cradles of many civilizations with a rich cultural heritage, has been intensifying its efforts to address the problem. Nevertheless, our literature analysis indicates that based on the misconception that the ITCG has no immediate and identifiable victims when compared to that of arms trade or narcotics, both national and international responses to this end have been limited. Moreover, the lack of ratification of essential international legal instruments, such as the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects and the 2017 Nicosia Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property, further limits cross-border collaboration and coordination in tackling the trading of cultural goods. Accordingly, by reviewing and incorporating relevant literature, this paper critically analyses how Turkey has established its pertinent national legal and institutional framework. Secondly, in light of statistical evidence, the article provides a critique of how relevant stakeholders and law enforcement agencies (LEAs), in particular, deal with this type of crime. By doing so, this paper highlights the obstacles they encounter and offers a number of novel solutions, which would not only eliminate the identified predicaments but also help create more effective policies that could enhance the operational aspects of countering the ITCG.

Organ trafficking has been receiving more attention in recent years as its association with transnational crime organizations became evident. Most of the academic studies available on this topic are qualitative case studies, descriptively analyzing the nature of the crime and the agents involved. These studies often highlight the unique nature of organ trafficking, which is the involvement of medical service providers in the network. There have been, however, no effort made to examine the connections between medical service providers and other agents in the network in a quantitative fashion. This study presents unique quantitative data extracted from the “Medicus case”, a well-documented court case involving kidney trafficking that surfaced in Pristina, Kosovo, in 2008. Social Network Analysis (SNA) was employed to quantitatively analyze the structure and characteristics of the kidney trafficking network. The results reveal that there was a significant variation in the level of involvement in kidney trafficking both across and within different types of agents. Notably, medical staff, facilities, and brokers played vital roles in the kidney trafficking network. Moreover, kidney sellers held a more prominent role than kidney buyers, with certain sellers playing particularly influential roles. In sum, this study demonstrates the promise of SNA as a tool for understanding kidney trafficking networks, and that further research is warranted to fully explore its potential in this field.

Gambling-related match-fixing is a form of corruption that has become a global issue particularly since the start of the new millennium. Research on match-fixing has often emphasised the involvement of mafia-like criminal groups in match-fixing arrangements. By incorporating an activity-centred view of organised crime, this paper examines how, and to what extent, organised crime is involved in betting-related match-fixing with particular focus on the 2011 Korean football scandal. Analysing data from 11 in-depth interviews with government, football and gambling officials and two convicted footballers, this paper traces the relative contributions of external criminal influences and internal vulnerabilities of the football league towards the occurrence of the K-League’s match-fixing cases. The results suggest that illegal betting operators’ exploitation of match-fixing to hedge risks demonstrates the influence of external criminal groups. However, risks were also observed within the football sector (e.g., financial and performance imbalances in the league, normalised betting and inside-trading amongst footballers, close social links with organised mobs, etc.) revealing that, at that time, K-football was not only susceptible to external criminal influences but facilitated the opportunistic structure for match-fixing. Overall, this study highlights that match-fixing is not solely instigated by organised crime groups, but can also be incubated within a sport whose culture, management and ethics are not ready to co-exist with gambling.

Abstract

Thinking about organised crime as an ecosystem is not only novel but also offers much potential to add to the theoretical and policy-based literature in this area. While organised crime is often analysed as relationships between criminal groups and consumers of illicit goods/services, little work has analysed specific forms of organised crime activities as ecosystems where different constituent parts are dependent upon each other for the crime activity to occur. This paper analyses the organisation of sexual exploitation by entrepreneurial organised crime groups selling sex in the United Kingdom. Based upon 30 interviews with 23 law enforcement forces in England and Wales and five interviews with Adult Service Website Operators; it identifies how an ecosystem is built that ensures (a) profit generation and (b) avoidance of legal prosecution. Our analysis not only illustrates how a market ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ ecosystem is generated through mutually convenient ‘organiser’, ‘marketer’ and ‘buyer’ relationships, but also how the roles of these actors ensure sexual exploitation continues.