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, Melina Risso, Terine Husek and Lycia Brasil

Researchers analyzed data from 369 the Federal Police (PF) operations carried out between 2016 and 2021

Environmental crimes are rarely committed isolated from other offenses. Amazon deforestation is not only largely illegal but also driven by a diverse array of offenders through markets contaminated with crimes that despoil the environment, such as illegal logging, illegal mining (especially gold), land grabbing and unsustainable farming. There are a wide array of violations, from environmental, to tax evasion and interpersonal violence from assault to homicide.

The document provides an overview of this biome of Amazon crimes drawn from a detailed analysis of 369 Brazilian Federal Police operations carried out between 2016 and 2021. The police operations found that organized crime was behind half of environmental crimes they investigated, while illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives turned up in almost one in five police operations

The analysis also highlights another strategic failing: lack of data, institutional weaknesses and insufficient political will. All are vital to holding violators accountable for their actions, most critically when the crimes include stealing public lands for illegal farming and ranching – an important driver of illegal deforestation.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarapé Institute, 2022. 41p.

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 Jason Eligh

The flow of heroin from Asian production points to the coastal shores of eastern and southern Africa is not new. Whereas the first heroin transit routes in the region in the 1970s relied heavily on maritime transport to enter the continent, a number of transport modes and urban centres of the interior have increasingly become important features in the current movement of heroin in this region. Interior transit hubs and networks have developed around air transport nodes that use regular regional and international connections to ship heroin. As regional air routes proliferated and became more efficient, their utility and value for the heroin trade increased as well. Heroin is also consolidated and shipped over a frequently shifting network of overland routes, moving it deeper into the African interior in a south-westerly direction across the continent.

Consequently, a shallow flood of heroin has gradually seeped across the region, and this has had a significant impact on the many secondary towns found along the continent’s transcontinental road networks. These places, in turn, have spawned their own small local heroin markets, and become waypoints in rendering sustainable the now chronic, metered progression of heroin’s resolute geographic diffusion across the region.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2020. 100p.

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.

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 R. Barri Flowers

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we are confronted with a number of serious social issues that have carried over from the past century. One of these relates to the growing phenomenon of runaway prostitution involved children and the implications. Each year in the United States, as many as 2 million children leave home for whereabouts unknown by the parents or caretakers. Tens of thousands of other children are pushed out of the house or abandoned by parents or guardians. These caretakers may be aware of where these youths are located, but do not want to find them and bring them back home. This only exacerbates the problem of homeless street kids who must not only search for survival but also search for love in all the wrong places. However, not all runaways leave home due to intolerable conditions or family dysfunction. Some find they prefer to be on their own for various reasons including independence, sex, problems at school, rebellion, drug addiction, and adventure. Rarely do they find a better life away from home. The correlation between running away from home and harsh street life such as exposure to prostitution, substance abuse, AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, violence, criminality, and victimization has been well documented, as have findings that many children who run away from home were victims of child sexual abuse, neglect, family violence, broken homes, impoverishment, mental illness, and other familial and personal conflicts. Given the convergence of past, present, and future abuses and traumas the runaway is typically exposed to, it is obvious that most are caught up in a horrible cycle for which there seems no escape. Of course, there is a way out, but only if we as a society come to better understand how and why children leave home in the first place, and how their needs can most effectively be addressed and acted upon.

Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. 232p.

By Hannah Ford

Until recently, the topic of female sexual offenders remained under-researched, and many incorrect assumptions and beliefs still surround the subject. This book is organised in to five parts around eleven chapters. It provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research in this often overlooked area and discusses both adult female offenders and adolescents/younger children who commit sexual offences against children. After an in-depth evaluation of research literature, the author then considers a range of treatment approaches and directions for future research.

Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2004. 206p.

By Brandy Bang, Paige L. Baker, Alexis Carpinteri, and Vincent B. Van Hasselt

"Biological, psychological, and environmental risk factors leave children and adolescents vulnerable to corruption, coercion, and violence, as in cases of young people being trafficked and sexually exploited. While the public tends to associate such abuses with far-off locales, the numbers of American-born children targeted by sex traffickers, and of international youth brought to the U.S. by these exploiters, are growing and disturbing. Concise and well-detailed, Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children examines the severity and complexity of this form of crime, and how it is being addressed through law enforcement and legal channels. The book examines variables that make children susceptible to exploitation, with a special focus on male victims. Mechanisms of the offenses are covered, as are the current state of federal laws and strengths and shortcomings of prosecution efforts. Real-life case examples from federal law enforcement describe major forms of exploitation and victim and offender characteristics, with clear focus on such areas as: Sex trafficking risk factors. Methods of victimization by child prostitution. Consumers, traders, and distributors of child pornography. Offender networks in child pornography. The preferential sex tourist. Enticement/grooming processes of the sex traveler. Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children is a ready source of facts geared toward assisting professionals on the frontlines of intervention and prevention with this often-marginalized population, from health care and mental health providers and researchers to legislative bodies and law enforcement, as well as students interested in criminal justice, psychology, or law.

Cham: Springer, 2014. 62p.

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.

By Rachel Locke

Transnational organized crime (TOC) is a global challenge posing serious threats to our collective peace and security. But in conflict-affected and fragile states the threats of transnational organized crime present particular and insidious challenges requiring new and innovative responses. Not only does TOC undermine the strength of the state, it further affects the critical and often contested relationship between the state and society. In fragile and conflict-affected states it is precisely the degraded nature of this relationship that often prevents progress toward greater peace and prosperity. While there is now an established correlation between conflict and state fragility, much less is understood about the relationship between transnational organized crime, conflict, and fragility. This report examines the dynamics between conflict, state fragility, and TOC, demonstrating how the three fit together in an uneasy triumvirate, and it presents ideas for a more effective response. Roughly half of all illicit transactions in the world are taking place in countries experiencing a range of weak enforcement mechanisms, low levels of economic well-being, insufficient government capacity, and significant societal divisions. In these contexts, transnational criminal networks further erode state legitimacy by incentivizing corruption, infiltrating state structures, and competing with the state in the provision of services. Yet the dominant approach to tackling organized crime, what I term a “law-and-order” approach, frequently fails to account for the complex dynamics associated with criminal networks in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. This approach, which is primarily focused on security, sanctions, and the rule of law, is rarely tailored to the needs of countries suffering from severe governance deficits or those with a history of conflict. On the contrary, it has the potential to reinforce historical enmities between the state and its citizens and notions of state power as coercive control rather than legitimate representation

New York: International Peace Institute, July 2012. 24p.

By ENACT Africa

Lives are lost, forests and oceans are pillaged beyond the point of replenishment, animals are slaughtered, women, men, girls and boys are held in situations of violent abuse and exploitation. Customs officials receive bribes to turn their backs to a shipment of drugs. Police officers and soldiers sell their weapons on to street gangs. Politicians accept kickbacks, fix contracts and sell concessions to criminal groups and unethical corporations, so that they can profit from resources that were intended to improve the development opportunities of citizens. The harms caused by organised crime are widespread and profound. Yet because it is almost always obscured in the 'underworld', hidden in the shadows of remote borderlands, concealed in secrecy jurisdictions or felt most keenly by underserved communities, organised crime is a threat too easily overlooked. 'Organised crime' is not a term that has tended to be used in the African context. However, as the political economy of the continent is evolving and intertwining with other geopolitical and globalisation dynamics, the term is currently being applied to the continent with increasing frequency – and urgency. It describes everything from a range of illicit activities and actors, from human smuggling by militia groups along the North African coast, to the consorts and cronies aligned with heads of state.

ENACT Africa; 2019. 130p.

Edited by Corinna Elsenbroich, David Anzola and Nigel Gilbert

This book presents a multi-disciplinary investigation into extortion rackets with a particular focus on the structures of criminal organisations and their collapse, societal processes in which extortion rackets strive and fail and the impacts of bottom-up and top-down ways of fighting extortion racketeering. Through integrating a range of disciplines and methods the book provides an extensive case study of empirically based computational social science. It is based on a wealth of qualitative data regarding multiple extortion rackets, such as the Sicilian Mafia, an international money laundering organisation and a predatory extortion case in Germany. Computational methods are used for data analysis, to help in operationalising data for use in agent-based models and to explore structures and dynamics of extortion racketeering through simulations. In addition to textual data sources, stakeholders and experts are extensively involved, providing narratives for analysis and qualitative validation of models. The book presents a systematic application of computational social science methods to the substantive area of extortion racketeering. The reader will gain a deep understanding of extortion rackets, in particular their entrenchment in society and processes supporting and undermining extortion rackets. Also covered are computational social science methods, in particular computationally assisted text analysis and agent-based modelling, and the integration of empirical, theoretical and computational social science.

Cham, SWIT: Springer, 2016. 250p.

By Louise I. Shelley Dr.; John T. Picarelli; Allison Irby; Douglas M. Hart; Patricia A. Craig-Hart; Phil Williams Dr.; Steven Simon; Nabi Abdullaev; Bartosz Stanislawski; Laura Covill

The report presents three case studies of regions that are hospitable to transnational crime-terrorism interactions: Chechnya; the Black Sea region; and the tri-border area of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. The analysis of links between criminal and terrorist groups in these areas used a military intelligence method called "intelligence preparation of the battlefield," which involves the identification of areas where terrorism and organized crime are most likely to interact. Such areas are expressed not only in geographic terms but also conceptual terms; for example, the analysis identifies the way groups organize themselves, communicate, use technology, deploy their members, and share cultural affinities. Within each of these areas, investigators can identify indicators that suggest whether or not cooperation between specific terrorist and criminal groups are likely to occur. The general principle that previous research in this domain has developed is that terrorist and criminal groups have links via methods but not motives. This report concludes that although the motives of terrorists and organized criminals are most often different, the links that separate such groups are growing increasingly complex, such that the separation of motives is no longer unequivocal. This study identifies an evolutionary pattern whereby the sharing of methods leads to more intimate connections within a short time. Factors that influence this evolution are failed states, war-torn regions, and alliances developed in penal institutions and urban neighborhoods. The central recommendation is to incorporate crime analysis in the intelligence analysis of terrorism.

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2005. 115p.