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Posts in Social Sciences
Politics at Play: Geopolitics and Organized Crime in the Pacific 

 By Virginia Comolli   

Building and expanding on the analysis in the Global Organized Crime Index, the GI-TOC has undertaken to map trends in organized criminality in the Pacific (Oceania). The resulting papers contribute to filling some of the gaps in a region where crime-related data can be scarce. In turn, these analyses allow us to identify vulnerabilities as well as opportunities for intervention and mitigation. The Pacific islands now occupy a more prominent place on the international strategic chessboard as a result of the proliferation of trade, diplomatic and security engagements in the region in the 21st century.  This is due to greater foreign presence and influence in Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, and intensifying geopolitical competition among external partners. This reality, alongside greater connectivity and market trends, is also drastically  transforming the criminal landscape. Pacific islands have traditionally been considered as mostly immune from high levels of criminality due to their geographic remoteness.  However, highly pernicious illicit markets are taking hold, and the islands are becoming increasingly vulnerable to new threats in the form of cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crimes and the introduction of new narcotics, to mention just two examples. Who is behind these activities? There are multiple criminal actors present and active in the Pacific islands, but the most pervasive are foreign actors.  And within the foreign actor sub-set, there are a diverse array of nationalities and sectors. The one thing they have in common is their pivotal role vis a vis evolving crime dynamics. Across the series of papers, we map their different typologies. The emerging pictures suggest that, possibly contrary to expectations, business operators are often responsible for the bulk of organized criminality. This is particularly evident in the extractive industries, but also in sectors such as real estate and financial services. Yet, more ‘obvious’ criminal actors such as cartels and triads have also made their way to the islands and intensified their operations.

Geneva, SWIT:  Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 29p.

Street Corner Society

By William Foote Whyte

Research Background: The study was supported by various fellowships and guided by experts from Harvard and the University of Chicago.

Cornerville's Social Structure: The district is highly organized withdistinct social groups, despite being perceived as chaotic by outsiders.

Methodology: The author used participant observation, immersing himself in the community to understand its dynamics.

Community Impact: The research aimed to help Cornerville, with significant contributions from local residents and key informants.

University of Chicago Press, 2012, 364 pages

Immigration Data Matters

By Jeanne Batalova, Andriy Shymonyak, and Michelle Mittelstadt

  Although international migrants account for just 3.5 percent of the world’s population, their number—almost 272 million people as of 2019—is far from insubstantial. Current and historical research shows that immigration brings significant and long-lasting benefits to countries of destination and origin and to migrants and their families alike. But it also shows that immigration often comes with tremendous challenges for individuals, communities, and institutions. In the United States, a country with a long and complex immigration history, public and political debates that started well back into the 18th century about the size and type of immigration, as well as its socioeconomic impacts, show no sign of abating. And as other countries around the world become migrant-sending, receiving, or transit places (or frequently a combination), migration—whether voluntary or forced—has arguably earned a prime and enduring spot on national and international policy agendas. It also continues to capture significant public and media attention. What is often missing from these conversations is accurate, complete data about who these immigrants are, why they come and leave, and what places they occupy in the socioeconomic hierarchies of their sending and destination countries. In this edition, Immigration Data Matters, which updates an earlier Population Reference Bureau - Migration Policy Institute guide, we have significantly expanded a list of online resources that provide authoritative migration-related data and statistics to help inform understanding of this phenomenon in the United States and globally. As before, our main guiding principle is to offer data from population censuses and surveys, administrative datasets, and new analyses that can help our audience understand the size of immigrant populations and inflows and outflows, enforcement actions, public opinion, historical trends, citizenship acquisition, and many other aspects. Here we list and describe more than 250 data resources, half U.S., half international. These resources are collected or compiled by a wide range of sources, including government statistical agencies, international organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and reputable research organizations. We use these resources in our own research, and while the list is by no means exhaustive, our goal is to share the most accurate, relevant, publicly available migration-related data, in one user-friendly and accessible guide. We hope this guide helps bring more knowledge to an issue area where the facts are often missing  

Migration Policy Institute and The   Population Reference Bureau , 2020. 49p.

Political Violence in Mexico´s 2024 Election - Organized Crime Involvement

By María Calderón

 When it comes to an understanding of political violence in Mexico, there is a risk of solely equating it with criminal groups' activities or exclusively attributing it to such groups. However, the political violence phenomenon in Mexico is complex and diverse, with a particular nexus to locally based illicit economies, for which an all-containing approach is insufficient. About half of the political violence that occurred in Mexico during the 2018 elections was directly attributed to organized crime. During such time, political figures were killed at a rate of one per week. These numbers support the growing concern about criminal groups' involvement in Mexican politics. Criminal groups have used political violence in several ways: directly manipulating and influencing elections, protecting incumbent candidates with whom they have struck an agreement, killing candidates who are perceived as a threat to their interests, intimidating poll workers, and attacking and stealing voting booths, among others. The decrease in the profitability of trafficking heroin and cannabis, the legalization of marijuana in many US states, and increased fentanyl usage have forced cartels to recalibrate strategies and markets. Nowadays, criminal groups have partially shifted towards locally based illicit economies, such as oil theft, extortion, kidnapping, and other illegal activities that require control of local territories. All these variables come into play when understanding that criminalized electoral politics is a predominantly local phenomenon in Mexico. Political violence by criminal groups in Mexico is motivated by multiple factors, including economic interests, political objectives, and vendettas. Criminal organizations often avoid open confrontation when attacking politicians or political candidates, opting for other less visible techniques to minimize the impacts on police and law enforcement agencies, such as corruption. Installing or co-opting candidates at the municipal level has afforded criminal groups direct influence over the actions of local and state police. Access to intelligence on pending arrests or other operations has also proven beneficial for criminal organizations. Political influence has allowed criminal groups to employ local security forces as appendages of their organizations to detain or kill targets and to protect the transportation of illicit goods. Moreover, criminal organizations have tapped into state finances by co-opting government employees. 

Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2024. 6p.

World Drug Report 2024

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME

From the webpage description: "A global reference on drug markets, trends and policy developments, the World Drug Report offers a wealth of data and analysis and in 2024 comprises several elements tailored to different audiences. The web-based Drug market patterns and trends [hyperlink] module contains the latest analysis of global, regional and subregional estimates of and trends in drug demand and supply in a user-friendly, interactive format supported by graphs, infographics and maps. The Key findings and conclusions booklet [hyperlink] provides an overview of selected findings from the analysis presented in the Drug market patterns and trends module and the thematic Contemporary issues on drugs booklet, while the Special points of interest [hyperlink] fascicle offers a framework for the main takeaways and policy implications that can be drawn from those findings. As well as providing an in-depth analysis of key developments and emerging trends in selected drug markets, the Contemporary issues on drugs booklet [hyperlink] looks at several other developments of policy relevance. [...] The World Drug Report 2024 is aimed not only at fostering greater international cooperation to counter the impact of the world drug problem on health, governance and security, but also at assisting Member States in anticipating and addressing threats posed by drug markets and mitigating their consequences."

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME. 2024

Murder trends in South Africa’s deadliest provinces 

By David Bruce

The South African per-capita murder rate has steadily escalated since 2011/12, when it was at its lowest since 1994. The 2022/23 rate of 45 per 100 000 is the highest in 20 years. But focusing on national murder trends is misleading as trends vary greatly across the nine provinces. The current high per-capita murder rate is driven by high rates in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng. Key findings: South African murder trends vary considerably across provinces. The Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng have the highest per-capita murder rates. In 2022/23, the Eastern Cape had the highest murder rate (71 per 100 000), followed by KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, both with annual murder rates of 56. The four provinces with the most murders have also recorded the highest per-capita murder rate increases in the last 10 years. Since 2011/12, rates have increased most dramatically in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. The increase has been greatest from 2017/18 to 2022/23. The per-capita murder rate in the Western Cape decreased over the last five years. Recommendations The government and society must prioritise reducing murder rates, which are high and increasing. The collection of data about murder, and the analysis thereof, must be improved. ‘One-size-fits-all’ approaches to addressing murder are unlikely to be effective. Responses should be adapted to respond to the drivers of murder focusing on high-murder localities. Priority should be given to understanding and addressing murder in the four provinces with the highest per-capita murder rates. KwaZulu-Natal and, to a lesser degree, Gauteng experienced major surges in murder in 2021/22, with increases continuing in 2022/23. These have taken them well above their rates in the year before the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdown. Deaths during the July 2021 unrest were not a major contributor to the increases in murder in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in 2021/22. Many experts believe that the entrenchment and growth of organised crime has played a major role in the increasing number of murders. More in-depth provincially focused research and analysis is required to better understand the factors and circumstances driving murder trends. 

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2023. 12p.

Migrants and Crime in Sweden in the Twenty-First Century

By Göran Adamson

In 2005, the Swedish Crime Prevention Agency published a report about the link between immigration and crime. Since then, no comprehensive study has been conducted even though Sweden has experienced a large influx of migrants in combination with a rising crime rate. This study conducted by Göran Adamson and Tino Sanandaji is the first purely descriptive scientific investigation on the matter in fifteen years. The investigation (from 2002 to 2017) covers seven distinct categories of crime, and distinguishes between seven regions of origin. Based on 33 percent of the population (2017), 58 percent of those suspect for total crime on reasonable grounds are migrants. Regarding murder, manslaughter and attempted murder, the figures are 73 per cent, while the proportion of robbery is 70 percent. Non-registered migrants are linked to about 13 percent of total crime. Given the fact that this group is small, crime propensity among non-registered migrants is significant.

Sweden; Society, 2020. 13p.

Social Inclusion from Below: The Perspectives of Street Gangs and Their Possible Effects on Declining Homicide Rates in Ecuador

By David C. Brotherton, and Follow Rafael Gude

Since 2007, the Ecuadorian approach to crime control has emphasized efforts to reach higher levels of social control based on policies of social inclusion and innovations in criminal justice and police reform. One innovative aspect of this approach was the decision to legalize a number of street gangs in 2007. The government claims the success of these policies can be seen in homicide rates that have fallen from 15.35 per 100,000 in 2011 to 5 per 100,000 in 2017. However, little is understood about the factors and their combination that have produced this outcome. To explore this phenomenon, we developed a research project focusing on the impact of street gangs involved in processes of social inclusion on violence reduction. From April to October 2017, we collected multiple data sets including 60 face-to-face interviews with members from four different street subcultures in several field sites, field observations and archival materials to answer two primary questions: How has the relationship between street groups and state agencies changed in the past 10 years? How has this changed relationship contributed to a hitherto unexamined role in the homicide reduction phenomenon of Ecuador? We found that legalization helped reduce violence and criminality drastically while providing a space, both culturally and legally, to transform the social capital of the gang into effective vehicles of behavioral change. In policy terms, we argue that the social inclusion approach to street gangs should be continued and highlighted as a model of best practices of the state.

Washington, DC: IDB, 2018.

Higher Powers: Alcohol and After in Uganda’s Capital City

By China Scherz,  George Mpanga, and Sarah Namirembe

Higher Powers draws on four years of collaborative fieldwork carried out with Ugandans working to reconstruct their lives after attempting to leave behind problematic alcohol use. Given the relatively recent introduction of biomedical ideas of alcoholism and addiction in Uganda, most of these people have used other therapeutic resources, including herbal aversion therapies, engagements with balubaale spirits, and forms of deliverance and spiritual warfare practiced in Pentecostal churches. While these methods are at times severe, they contain within them understandings of the self and practices of sociality that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and towards the possibility of release. Higher Powers offers a reconceptualization of addiction and recovery that may prove relevant well beyond Uganda.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024.  156p.

Illegal synthetic opioids: Can Europe prevent a crisis?

By Mafalda Pardal, Elle Wadsworth, Beau Kilmer

Potent synthetic opioids, illegally produced, are starting to emerge in Europe. Considering the damaging harms caused by the opioid crisis in North America, which has led to a substantial surge in overdose deaths, it is crucial that European leaders understand the challenges associated with synthetic opioids. In this Perspective, we present and discuss the current situation in Europe concerning synthetic opioids, and draw on earlier and ongoing crises involving this group of substances to reflect on likely challenges ahead and ways to improve preparedness.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024. 20p.

The Exploitation of Climate Chaos, Confusion and Change A New Frontier for P/CVE Strategic Communication

By Jodie Wrigley

While scholarly debate continues about possible causal links between climate events and violent extremism, the evidence suggests that these events make communities more vulnerable to recruitment, provide fertile ground for anti-democracy sentiment, and erode trust in institutions and governments. It is recognised that many of these challenges play out in and leverage the on- and offline public sphere. Strategic communication, therefore, is an essential tool to utilise in this space to help prevent and counter violent extremism. This Policy Brief provides a starting point to explore further the potential nexus between climate events, violent extremism, and strategic communication. It explores a whole-of-society view of the potential strategic communication challenge and what actions practitioners could implement now to help address or minimise this existing or potential emerging threat . For the latest updated statistics on wildlife crime visit the World Animal Foundation website.

The Hague: The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - ICCT, 2024. 30p.

The political economy of illicit drug crops: forum introduction

By Frances Thomson, Patrick Meehan & Jonathan Goodhand (02 Apr 2024):

his article and the forum it introduces examine illicit drug crop (IDC) economies from agrarian perspectives. Examining IDCs as a group implies analysing how prohibition distinguishes them from other (licit) crops. We identify seven mechanisms through which prohibition shapes the agrarian political economy of IDCs and explore how these mechanisms and their effects generate distinctive patterns of development and political action amongst ‘illicit peasantries’. We also examine connections between illicit and licit crops, including how licit crop crises and illicit crop booms intertwine. We argue that IDC economies provide a bulwark for smallholders but are by no means peasant idylls.

The Journal of Peasant Studies. 2024. 39p.

EU Drug Markets Analysis 2024: Key insights for policy and practice

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA)

Availability remains high across the main drugs used in Europe, evidenced by the large and in some cases increasing quantities that continue to be seized in the European Union. In addition, the market for illicit drugs is characterised by the diversification of consumer products and the widespread availability of a broader range of drugs, including new psychoactive substances, often of high potency or purity. Specialised equipment may be required to meet the detection and monitoring challenges posed by this diversification.

The recent emergence of highly potent opioids, particularly benzimidazoles (nitazenes), poses a particularly complex threat to public health due to their increased risk of life-threatening poisoning. The potential emergence of new patterns of consumption in Europe is also a key threat, due to the availability of cheap and highly potent or pure drugs. This is particularly the case for cocaine, which has seen unprecedented levels of availability

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), 2024. 39p.

Drug Trafficking on the High Seas: A Primer on the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act Brendan McDonald Trial Attorney Criminal Division Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section

By Colleen King

In December 2023, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) offloaded approximately 18,219 pounds of cocaine from the USCG Cutter Waesche. The estimated street value of the cocaine was more than $239 million. The offload occurred as a result of six separate maritime interdictions, performed by separate cutters, taking place over a 17-day period off the coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. The interdictions were performed as part of the USCG’s counternarcotics mission. While interdictions of this size may seem out of the ordinary, the USCG routinely interdicts a variety of vessels, including Go-Fast Vessels and semi submersibles, with massive amounts of drugs (usually cocaine), moving from the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of South America northward to Mexico, the Caribbean, and eventually the United States. One can imagine that prosecuting interdictions like these may raise a variety of questions: could the United States assert jurisdiction over the suspected traffickers; would the maritime location of the interdiction matter; and would it make a difference if the ship carrying the contraband was flagged—registered—by another country? What about the transit time to a U.S. court for an initial appearance where the interdiction occurred over a thousand miles from the United States? The dizzying array of issues confronting a federal prosecutor following a high seas interdiction may not be typical of land-based legal challenges. Fortunately, a body of both federal law and international authorities is instructive on these questions. The Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA) is the United States’ principal statute addressing high seas drug trafficking and has supported thousands of prosecutions for decades. The MDLEA, as it re lates to controlled substances,5 prohibits the distribution, manufacture, or possession with intent to distribute or manufacture, controlled sub stances aboard a “covered vessel.” Its prohibitions apply “outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” and include both attempt and conspiracy liability. And, where an interdiction occurs outside of the United States, venue may be appropriate in your district. This article is intended to serve as an MDLEA primer. It will provide a brief his tory of the MDLEA, identify the MDLEA’s core definitional provisions, discuss its key criminal prohibition, detail its jurisdiction and venue pro vision, describe the MDLEA’s position on the use of international law as a defense, and finally, address its sentencing provisions.

March 2024 DOJ Journal of Federal Law and Practice

The End of Intuition-Based High-Crime Areas

By Ben Grunwald and Jeffrey Fagan

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012. Our results suggest that Wardlow may have been wrongly decided. Specifically, we find evidence that officers often assess whether areas are high crime using a very broad geographic lens; that they call almost every block in the city high crime; that their assessments of whether an area is high crime are nearly uncorrelated with actual crime rates; that the suspect’s race predicts whether an officer calls an area high crime as well as the actual crime rate; that the racial composition of the area and the identity of the officer are stronger predictors of whether an officer calls an area high crime than the crime rate itself; and that stops are less or as likely to result in the detection of contraband when an officer invokes high-crime area as a basis of a stop. We conclude with several policy proposals for courts, police departments, and scholars to help address these problems in the doctrine.

California Law Review 345-404 (2019

Observatory of Illicit Economies in South Eastern Europe

By Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s Observatory of Illicit Economies in South Eastern Europe.

In this issue, we focus on three cases where criminal groups from the region have been active in recent years: the Netherlands, Ecuador and parts of Africa.

These examples illustrate the growing involvement of Balkan criminal groups in some of the world’s hotspots for illicit activity. Research for these articles is facilitated by the Global Initiative’s network of contacts with local investigative journalists, as well as close cooperation between regional observatories of illicit economies, namely South Eastern Europe, West Africa and Latin America.

As part of the GI-TOC’s analysis of the risks of firearms trafficking from Ukraine, in this issue we show that the Western Balkans remain the main source of illegal weapons in Europe. At present, weapons are still cheap and plentiful in the region, and stockpiles have been augmented by inflows from Turkey via Bulgaria, particularly of gas and alarm guns. More on this topic can be found in a forthcoming GI-TOC report on trends in arms trafficking from the Ukraine conflict.

In this issue, we also report on a major crackdown by Serbian authorities in late 2023 on increasingly violent smugglers operating along the border between Serbia and Hungary, and examine how this has displaced migration flows towards Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Risk Bulletin No. 18. Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2024. 25p.

Tipping Scales: Exposing the Growing Trade of African Pangolins into China’s Traditional Medicine Industry

By Faith Honor , Amanda Shaverand Devin Thorne

The trafficking of pangolins and their scales drives corruption, undermines the rule of law, creates public health risks, and even threatens local and regional security. Additionally, the illicit pangolin trade may have even played a role in onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Critically, the trade—and all of its related challenges—appears to be growing: between 2015 and 2019, 253 tonnes2 of pangolin scales were confiscated, and the annual quantity of pangolin scales seized increased by nearly 400%. To expose the logistics of how these scales are trafficked internationally, Tipping the Scales uses publicly available seizure data and investigative case studies. The global plight of pangolins is increasingly well-known, but less understood are the opaque supply chains that enable pangolin trafficking. To trace this illicit system from consolidation hubs in West and Central Africa to China’s consumer markets, Tipping the Scales analyses 899 pangolin seizures. Drawing on C4ADS’ Wildlife Seizure Database, law enforcement partner seizure data, official government documents, corporate data, and expert interviews, the report details how traffickers nest their activities within licit systems of trade and commerce. To disrupt this trade, C4ADS identifies opportunities for intervention and capacity building.

In Section I, the report finds that pangolin scale traffickers have co-opted bushmeat supply chains and legal breeding programs for their illicit activities. Bushmeat scale trafficking supply chains are particularly prominent in Central and West Africa; 72% of African scale seizures over the last five years have come from those regions. Growing demand for pangolin meat and scales has made pangolins a dual-transaction good3 that relies on transport networks between rural areas and urban and coastal distribution hubs. Further, the report finds that pangolin breeding programs in sub-Saharan Africa obscure the lines between poaching, conservation, and science. In Section II, the report finds that bulk pangolin scale shipments often exit the continent through coastal countries in Central and West Africa. While 70% of intercontinental trafficking instances tied to Africa rely on the air transport sector, 81% of the total weight of pangolin scales are trafficked intercontinentally via the maritime transport sector. China and Hong Kong are the trade’s most prominent destinations. Since 2015, 42% of the 195 tonnes of pangolin scales seized throughout Asia originated in Africa and were seized in or bound for China or Hong Kong. In Section III, the report finds that there are more than 1,000 companies, hospitals, and other entities participating in China’s legal market for medicinal pangolin products. In this market, which allows companies to privately stockpile pangolin scales, traffickers exploit lax regulations to sell scales from Africa and Asia. Government-reported pangolin scale consumption quotas, geo-tagged company data, and seizures suggest that Guangdong and Hunan provinces have relatively high levels of exposure to both the legal pangolin market and pangolin trafficking. Based on these findings, Tipping the Scales makes 10 recommendations to increase detection of and improve enforcement against transnational criminal networks operating in Africa and Asia (see page 58).

Washington, D: C4ADS, 2020. 60p.

Stolen Amazon: The Roots of Environmental Crime in Bolivia

By Insight Crime

This present study on Bolivia was led by InSight Crime. The findings and analysis are based on one year of open-source and fieldwork investigation in the cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz, and desk research, phone, and face-to-face interviews with environmental experts, government and security officials, members of local communities, academics, and others.1 The report provides a snapshot of the complex web of actors (state and non-state) and relationships fueling environmental crime in the Bolivian Amazon. Rather than just diagnosing the issue, the study aims to raise new dialogue and intervention opportunities regarding environmental crime in the region. This study addresses long-standing issues of securing land rights to traditional communities in the Amazon, many of which currently face new forms of land grabbing and land trafficking, notably by export companies extracting natural resources. It also includes ideas for reforming and strengthening structurally weak and corruption prone public institutions in the Bolivian Amazon, notably those related to land, environmental, and security issues. Finally, the report also sheds light on the transnational and cross-border dynamics of environmental crime in Bolivia in activities such as wildlife trafficking and illegal mercury trafficking for river-gold mining and illegal logging exports. The complexity of increasingly globalized supply chains initiating in or cutting through the Bolivian Amazon call for more and stronger regional and international cooperation to dismantle environmental crime and protect the forest and its people

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2024. 73p.

Oil Theft, Energy Security and Energy Transition in Mexico

By Vlado Vivoda, Ghaleb Krame and Martin Spraggon

Oil theft refers to the exploitation of crude oil or refined petroleum products for criminal purposes. In Mexico, oil theft—referred to as huachicolero—is endemic and widespread. By framing it within the energy security and transition context, this paper offers a new perspective on the problem of oil theft in Mexico. Focusing on crude oil and refined petroleum, the paper demonstrates that Mexico’s energy security—as framed around the 4As (availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptance)—has deteriorated over the past decade. Application of the 4As framework in the Mexican context shows that the increasing frequency of oil theft has contributed to this deterioration. The proposed solution to the energy security and oil theft problems is centred on Mexico moving from gasoline and diesel to electrification in the transportation sector. The paper demonstrates that, while transport electrification in Mexico has been lagging behind other countries, recent developments in the country point to growing momentum among the country’s political and business elites, in tandem with US partners, in support for the energy transition. Areas where further emphasis should be placed to accelerate Mexico’s energy transition in the transportation sector are identified. Finally, the feasibility of and potential limitations associated with implementing the transition are evaluated.

Resources 202312(2), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/resources12020030

Determining economic factors for sex trafficking in the United States using count time series regression

By Yuhyeong Jang1 ·Raanju R. Sundararajan1 ·Wagner Barreto-Souza2 · Elizabeth Wheaton-Paramo

The article presents a robust quantitative approach for determining significant economic factors for sex trafficking in the United States. The aim is to study monthly counts of sex trafficking-related convictions and use a wide range of economic variables as covariates to investigate their effect on conviction counts. A count time series model is considered along with a regression setup to include economic time series as covariates (economic factors) to explain the counts on sex trafficking-related convictions. The statistical significance of these economic factors is investigated, and the significant factors are ranked based on appropriate model selection methods. The inclusion of time-lagged versions of the economic factor time series in the regression model is also explored. The authors’ findings indicate that economic factors relating to immigration policy, consumer price index and labor market regulations are the most significant in explaining sex trafficking convictions

Empirical Economics. 2024, 18pg