By ENACT

Weak medical regulations and the lack of regulatory autonomy poses challenges in efforts to address organised criminality in the sector. The COVID-19 global pandemic has had profound social, economic and geo-political impact across the globe. In East Africa, countries have attempted to face this issue in the context of resource challenged national healthcare systems. Organised crime groups (OCGs) however have sought to exploit the vulnerabilities in society, which have developed following fundamental changes in population behaviours as a result of fear and often misinformation concerning the pandemic. Challenges in regulatory authority autonomy combined with widespread adoption in East African of misinformation on COVID-19 create an ideal operating environment for OCGs. This has encouraged OCGs to move into the illicit medications market over other forms of crime. A COVID-19 related hysteria has maximised profits for organised crime in this field, whilst enabling relatively risk free activity for criminals. This activity has included increased importations of counterfeit and substandard medications from Asia as well as the acquisition of powerful painkillers to sell on the black market.

ENACT Africa, 2020. 25p.

Edited by Jennifer Schweppe and Mark Austin Walters

The Globalisation of Hate: Internationalising Hate Crime? is the first book to examine the impact of globalisation on our understanding of hate speech and hate crime. Bringing together internationally acclaimed scholars with researchers, policy makers and practitioners from across the world, it critically scrutinises the concept of hate crime as a global phenomenon, seeking to examine whether hate crime can, or should, be conceptualised within an international framework and, if so, how this might be achieved. …. The final part of the book concludes with an examination of the different ways in which hate speech and hate crime is being combatted globally. International law, internet regulation and the use of restorative practices are evaluated as methods of addressing hate-based conflict, with the discussions drawn from existing frameworks as well as exploring normative standards for future international efforts. Taken together, these innovative and insightful contributions offer a timely investigation into the effects of hate crime, offering an interdisciplinary approach to tackling what is now a global issue.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 340p.

Edited by Philip L. Reichel and Jay S. Albanese

Transnational crime and justice will characterize the 21st century in the same way that traditional street crimes dominated the 20th century. In the <strong>Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice, Philip Reichel and Jay Albanese bring together top scholars from around the world to offer perspectives on the laws, crimes, and criminal justice responses to transnational crime. This concise, reader-friendly handbook is organized logically around four major themes: the problem of transnational crime; analysis of specific transnational crimes; approaches to its control; and regional geographical analyses. Each comprehensive chapter is designed to be explored as a stand-alone topic, making this handbook an important textbook and reference tool for students and practitioners alike.

Los Angeles, SAGE, 2014. 576p.

By Jay S Albanese

Organized Crime provides readers with a clear understanding of organized crime, including its definition and causes, how it is categorized under the law, models to explain its persistence, and the criminal justice response to organized crime, including investigation, prosecution, defense, and sentencing.

This book offers a comprehensive survey, including an extensive history of the Mafia in the United States; a legal analysis of the offenses that underlie organized crimes; specific attention to modern manifestations of organized crime activity, such as human smuggling, Internet crimes, and other transnational criminal operations; and the application of ethics to the study of organized crime.

Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2015. 390p.

Francesco Calderoni,Tommaso Comunale,Gian Maria Campedelli,Martina Marchesi,Deborah Manzi and Niccolò Frualdo

There is relatively strong evidence that being male and having committed prior criminal activity and violence are associated with future organised crime recruitment. There is weak evidence that prior sanctions, social relations with organised crime-involved subjects and a troubled family environment are associated with recruitment. This systematic review examines what individual-level risk factors are associated with recruitment into organised crime. Despite the increase of policies addressing organised crime activities, little is known about recruitment. Existing knowledge is fragmented and comprises different types of organised criminal groups.Recruitment refers to the different processes leading individuals to stable involvement in organised criminal groups, including mafia, drug trafficking organisations, adult gangs and outlawed motorcycle gangs. This systematic review excludes youth (street) gangs, prison gangs and terrorist groups.

Oslo, Norway: Campbell Collaborative, 2022. 68p.

By Robert Muggah

Climate change is already disrupting cities around the world. Continued greenhouse gas emissions and warming are intensifying heat islands, contributing to water shortages, rising seas, increasing flood-related risks and worsening pollution. With over two thirds of the population expected to live in cities by 2030, the effects are consequential. Large and fast-growing cities in Asia, Africa and the Americas are likely to be hit hardest by more frequent and intense disasters. Coastal cities across North America and Western Europe are likewise on the front-line.

Climate change is influencing all aspects of city life, from labor markets and food security to migration patterns and economic productivity. One critical, if under-examined, way climate change is affecting cities is in relation to crime and victimization. To be sure, the debate about the relationships between climate and security – and in particular the influence of global warming on conflict onset, duration and intensity – has heated-up over the past decade, there is less attention devoted to how climate change stands to influence criminal violence in cities around the world.

Evidence suggests that dramatic climate change will generate a substantial increase in crime in many cities – and especially more vulnerable neighborhoods. In this paper, Robert Muggah, Igarapé Institute co-founder and Research and Innovation Director analyses studies and theories about the link climate-crime and present strategies and preventive measures to avoid violence while protecting the most vulnerable.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2021. 13p.

By The Igarapé Institute and INTERPOL

The Igarapé Institute, in a partnership with INTERPOL, releases the “Guidance note on combating environmental crime: lessons from fighting illegal gold mining in the Amazon Basin”. The publication offers practical guidance for law enforcement, criminal justice and environmental protection authorities to better understand the scope and scale of the challenge. It is designed for national and subnational environmental investigators, police officers and public prosecutors at the forefront of efforts to dismantle environmental crimes in the Amazon.

The guidance note reviews policy and operational strategies meant to prevent, control and reduce illegal small-scale gold mining in the Amazon – with a focus on Brazil, Colombia and Peru. The note offers a catalogue of 12 measures already in place in the three countries that can be valuable for law enforcement, criminal justice and environmental protection authorities to learn from each other, cooperate and coordinate activities within and across countries.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2021. 41p.

By Melina Risso, Julia Sekula, Lycia Brasil, Peter Schmidt and Maria Eduarda Pessoa de Assis

In the past 20 years, the price of gold has increased from US$400 to US$1861.50 per ounce, driven by rising demand in China and India. Gold is time and capital-intensive to produce, which is why this rise in demand has driven an attendant demand for illegal gold mining — an industry that is estimated to yield globally between US$12 and US$28 billion annually.2 The Brazilian Amazon is rife with illegal gold mining operations, with 321 identified points of illegal, active and inactive mines arranged in the 9 states that comprise the Brazilian Amazon Basin.3 This has had a direct impact on deforestation rates and health hazards of local indigenous populations. Deforestation across the Amazon grew 25% in the first half of 2020 according to INPE (Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research). The contribution of mining activity to deforestation rates as a whole has increased from 4% in 2017 to 23% in indigenous territories in data recorded up to June 10, 2020.4 Deforestation has been concentrated in indigenous territories where, between 2018 and 2019, environmental degradation by mining increased 107%. This devastation has a price — according to Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutors Office, 1kg of gold represents roughly R$1.7m in environmental damages, culminating in an environmental cost roughly 10 times greater than the current price of gold.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2021. 50p.

By Laura Trajber Waisbich, Terine Husek and Vinicius Santos

The ecosystem of environmental crime in the Amazon is largely to blame for the current levels of deforestation and degradation of the biggest tropical forest on the planet. Several illegal economic activities, representing the main drivers of destruction in the river basin, take a heavy toll on the forest and its inhabitants. Based on an analysis of the spatial distribution of the Federal Police operations to fight environmental crime in the Legal Amazon between 2016 and 2021, this study highlights the hotspots for a range of illicit forest-based economic activities in the region, while also showing how other locations within and outside the Brazilian Amazon form part of a broader nexus of environmental crime. The study reviewed more than 300 Federal Police operations and identified 846 territories that make up the ecosystem of environmental crime in the Amazon. These territories are located in 262 municipalities, both in the Legal Amazon and beyond its borders. Of the cities mapped, 75% are located in the Legal Amazon, 22% are in other regions of Brazil and 3% are in neighboring countries. These territories are where environmental and associated crimes converge to fuel illegal deforestation, illegal logging, public land grabbing (known as grilagem, in Portuguese), agriculture and livestock rife with environmental illegalities and illegal mining.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Igarape, 2022. 58p.

By Thomas Friis Søgaard Marie Højlund Bræmer Michael Mulbjerg Pedersen

This report provides an analysis of current drug supply models and the related violence and exploitation of vulnerable groups in Denmark. Recent years have seen a growth in criminals’ exploitation of vulnerable groups for drug-related crimes. This development appears to be driven by several structural factors, including increased drug market competition and a proliferation of more labour-intensive supply models. Based on the findings of this study, we identify some priorities for future research to understand the impact of digital developments in retail-level drug distribution on vulnerable individuals and to inform responses to reduce criminal exploitation.

Lisbon: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), 2021. 55p.

By European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA)

Our overall assessment is that drug availability and use remain at high levels across the European Union, although considerable differences exist between countries. Approximately 83.4 million or 29 % of adults (aged 15–64) in the European Union are estimated to have ever used an illicit drug, with more males (50.5 million) than females (33.0 million) reporting use. Cannabis remains the most widely consumed substance, with over 22 million European adults reporting its use in the last year. Stimulants are the second most commonly reported category. It is estimated that in the last year 3.5 million adults consumed cocaine, 2.6 million MDMA and 2 million amphetamines.

Lisbon: EMCDDA: 2022. 60p.

By Simone Haysom

The heroin economy has shaped the growth of coastal villages, border towns and megacities across East and Southern Africa.

The trafficking of heroin is a crucial component of urban politics and development in East and Southern Africa. The heroin economy has shaped the growth of small coastal villages, border towns and megacities along the Southern Route – a network moving Afghan drugs south across the Indian Ocean and onward through Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique to South Africa. Rapid and dysfunctional urbanisation, the migration of low-skilled youth throughout the region, unemployment and the inability of local governments to cope with service delivery needs have contributed to the spread of the drug, building fortunes for a few ‘big fish’ and promoting corruption among police and politicians.

ENACT (Africa) 2020. 60p..

By Simone Haysom

The heroin route that crosses South Africa has created a regional heroin economy, with severe social and political repercussions. Heroin use has developed in both major cities and small towns – an important shift in local drug markets that is taking a toll on thousands of people. This policy brief sheds light on the domestic heroin economy, analyses its implications and proposes responses to its drivers and consequences. An effective response will need to consider political factors and must be regionally coordinated. Market dynamics and harm-reduction approaches should also be included. The most sustainable strategies address root causes, disrupt markets and tackle corruption.

ENACT (Africa) 2019. 12p.

By Simone Haysom, Peter Gastrow and Mark Shaw

This report examines the characteristics of the heroin trade off the East African coast and highlights the criminal governance systems that facilitate drug trafficking along these routes.

In recent years, the volume of heroin shipped from Afghanistan along a network of maritime routes in East and southern Africa appears to have increased considerably. Most of this heroin is destined for Western markets, but there is a spin-off trade for local consumption. An integrated regional criminal market has developed, both shaping and shaped by political developments in the region. Africa is now experiencing the sharpest increase in heroin use worldwide and a spectrum of criminal networks and political elites in East and southern Africa are substantially enmeshed in the trade. This report focuses on the characteristics of the heroin trade in the region and how it has become embedded in the societies along this route. It also highlights the features of the criminal governance systems that facilitate drug trafficking along this coastal route.

ENACT (Africa), 2018. 54p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

This paper explores policy options for responding to the supply of heroin and synthetic opioids from Mexico to the United States. Forced eradication of opium poppy has been the dominant response to illicit crop cultivation in Mexico for decades. Forced eradication appears to deliver fast results in suppressing poppy cultivation, but the suppression is not sustainable even in the short term. Farmers find a variety of ways to adapt and replant after eradication. Moreover, eradication undermines public safety and rule of law efforts in Mexico, both of high interest to the United States….Unless security and rule of law in Mexico significantly improve, the licensing of opium poppy in Mexico for medical purposes is unlikely to reduce the supply of heroin to the United States. Mexico faces multiple feasibility obstacles for getting international approval for licensing its poppy cultivation for medical purposes, including, currently, the inability to prevent opium diversion to illegal supply and lack of existing demand for its medical opioids. In seeking to establish such demand, Mexico should avoid setting off its own version of medical opioid addiction.

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution,2020. 28p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Carol Graham, Keith Humphreys, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Bryce Pardo, Peter Reuter, Bradley D. Stein, and Paul H. Wise

This Brookings opioid project, “The Opioid Crisis in America: Domestic and International Dimensions,” has analyzed policy options for reducing demand, providing treatment, designing regulatory frameworks, and implementing domestic law enforcement and international supply control measures. It has explored local impacts on communities as well as state and federal level responses and international actions. It has paid special attention to vulnerable communities, such as politically and economically disenfranchised Americans, women and children, and military veterans.

Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 2020. 15p.

Edited by Ravi K. Thiara, Stephanie A. Condon, and Monika Schröttle

This book draws together both: theory and practice on minority/migrant women and gendered violence. The interplay of gender, ethnicity, religion, class, generation and sexuality in shaping the lives, experiences and choices of minority/migrant women affected by violence has not always been adequately theorised within much of the existing writing on violence against women. Feminist theory, especially the insights provided by the concept of intersectionality, are central to the editors’ conceptual frameworks.

Leverkusen-Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich , 2011. 426p.

By Elizabeth Burke Voorhees

The purpose of this study was to identify core competencies for supervisory-level security management professionals working in the sports and entertainment industry. Qualified and trained sport and event security-management professionals are essential to support the U.S. homeland security objectives outlined in Presidential Policy Directive21. Providing effective safety and security for sports and entertainment events requires specialized knowledge and skill on the behalf of security-management practitioners who detect, deter, prevent, and respond to potential risks and threats. This qualitative research study employed a Delphi research design to elicit expertise from a purposefully selected panel of experts (N = 36). The expert panel suggested a list of competencies in Delphi round one and rated each competency statement based on level of importance and frequency using a 5-point Likert scale. The expert panel produced 136 core competencies in seven clusters: Risk Management, Emergency Planning, Problem Solving and Decision Making, Leadership, Communication, Building Collaborative Relationships, and Human Resource Management. Twenty-nine panelists successfully completed all three rounds of the Delphi study yielding a 93.5% response rate. Sport and event security management professionals and industry stakeholders can use the validated list of competencies to develop human capital and improve performance though the strategic application of human resource management,

Hattiesburg, MS: University of Southern Mississippi, 2010. 247p.

By Justin Kurland

Numerous studies have been conducted on football ‘hooliganism’ with the majority of this work ignoring the immediate, environmental conditions that facilitate opportunities for crime in the football match day context. Consequently, the existing theoretical framework for explaining why crime emerges during football matches remains incomplete. This thesis aims to fill this gap for understanding modern football-related crime and disorder. The thesis uses a predominantly environmental criminology framework to explore whether crime opportunity theories can make sense of crime patterns observed around previously unexplored English domestic football stadia. It is crime event-oriented, focussing on how variation in the ecology of the area around stadia on match days and a set of counterfactual days when the stadium is not used facilitates different criminal opportunities. This is achieved primarily through the analysis of police-recorded crime data for three kilometre areas surrounding a sample of five stadia for the period 2005- 2010. The thesis focuses on three components of crime events - where they occur, when they occur, and why a disproportionate amount of it clusters in some neighbourhoods and not others. Despite the contrasting physical environment around the five stadia, the findings suggest very similar spatial and temporal crime patterns in the area surrounding stadia when they are used relative to when they are not and thus lend support to environmental theories of crime in the football context. The findings also help draw attention to where and when crime is elevated on football match days. The implications of the research for reducing the unintended and unwanted side-effect of football that is desired for the positive utilities it brings, in particular the practicality of employing situational crime prevention in the context of English domestic football are discussed.

London: University College London, 2014.

By Phyllis Dininio

The USAID Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (DCHA/CMM) commissioned Management Systems International (MSI) to conduct research on the relationship between organized crime, conflict and fragility. The year-long research project included a literature review and country case studies in Guatemala, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that examine the interaction between organized criminality and USAID conflict and fragility programming in both causal directions—with regard to how criminality affects USAID implementation and results, and how assistance affects criminality. ..The report concludes with a set of key findings and recommendations. Organized crime is both facilitated by, and contributor to, state fragility.

Arlington, VA: Management Systems International, 2015. 61p.