By Economist Intelligence Unit.

Behind most every major headline, every major story in the news, lies another potential headline and another story about some form of illicit trade. From the refugee crises in the Mediterranean and South-east Asia, where the chaos is providing cover for human traffickers, to North Korea, a criminal state that couldn’t survive if it didn’t trade in arms, illicit cigarettes and counterfeit currency. Even the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election has led to indictments on money laundering, which is both a product of illicit trade and a facilitator of it. To measure how nations are addressing these and other issues related to illicit trade, the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT) has commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit to produce the Global Illicit Trade Environment Index. The global index expands upon an Asia-specific version, originally created by The Economist Intelligence Unit in2016toscore17economiesinAsiaonthe extent to which they enabled or prevented illicit trade. This year’s updated and expanded version now includes 84 economies, providing a global perspective and new insights on the trade’s societal and economic impacts.During research for the construction of the index and in writing this report, The Economist Intelligence Unit interviewed executives and • experts from across the world. Their time and insights are greatly appreciated.

NY: TRACIT 2017. 44p.

By Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT).

Illicit trade in alcohol is widespread, representing significant percentages of alcohol consumption worldwide and stripping governments of billions of dollars in tax revenues. In almost all cases, illicit trade in alcohol results in serious health risks to consumers, revenue loss, and brand degradation for legitimate manufacturers, as well as reduced tax revenue for governments. This publication explores the situation in Costa Rica and highlights a number of regulatory and legal mechanisms that the government can implement to better control and combat illicit alcohol.

NY: TRACIT(September 2019) 14p.

By The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT)

Illicit trade in alcohol is widespread, representing significant percentages of alcohol consumption worldwide and stripping governments of billions of dollars in tax revenues. In almost all cases, illicit trade in alcohol results in serious health risks to consumers, revenue loss, and brand degradation for legitimate manufacturers, as well as reduced tax revenue for governments. This publication explores the situation in India and the causes for the flourishing trade in illicit alcohol. The problem in India is exacerbated by the massive size of the country, the federal structure, diverse drinking patterns, the varied regulatory structure and regional nuances and traditions that characterize the alcohol market. Notably, the report highlights a number of regulatory and legal mechanisms that the government can implement to better control and combat illicit alcohol.

NY: The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT) (September 2019) 16p.

By Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT)

South Africa is one of the largest and most diversified economies in Africa. The country has a well-established manufacturing base, is a major supplier of goods and services to the continent, has a large consumer base, serves as a regional transport hub, has a strong tourism and financial sector, as well as robust traditional sectors such as agriculture and mining. This diversification, however, means that South Africa also faces challenges from illicit trade on multiple fronts. This publication explores the situation in South Africa and highlights a number of regulatory and legal mechanisms that the government can implement to better control and combat illicit trade.

NY: TRACIT. October 2019. 11p.

By A Joint Effort Between EU-ABC & TRACIT.

TRACIT has joined with the EU-ASEAN Business Council (EU-ABC) to issue a report that sheds light on the growing problem of illicit trade in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The report, titled, “Tackling Illicit Trade in ASEAN”, comes at a time when illicit trade is gaining momentum in ASEAN and as officials prepare for the upcoming 14th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC). The paper investigates various forms of illicit trade in the region, the affected industry sectors and provides critical insight on how government and industry leaders can work together to introduce regulatory changes to confront this pressing issue.

NY: TRACIT. Advocacy Paper, 2020. 35p.

By Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT)

Among the worst crimes associated with illicit trade is the demand it creates for forced and child labor. The TRACIT report, The Human Cost of Illicit Trade: Exposing demand for forced labor in the dark corners of the economy,​ studies an overlooked corner of the global economy, namely the incidence of forced labor in illicit market activities. The report shows that women, children and men of all ages and race are forced to labor in illicit sectors, where they are abused by organized criminals in their pursuit of profits.

Occurrences of forced labor are examined in eight sectors where illicit practices are regularly reported. These activities include: (i) counterfeiting of apparel, footwear and luxury goods; (ii) counterfeiting of electronics machinery and equipment; (iii) substandard and falsified medical products; (iv) illegal mining; (v) illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing; (vi) illicit tobacco products; (vii) illegal pesticides; and (viii) illegal timber.

This report shows how organized criminals are using and abusing labor and demonstrates how forced labor intersects with multiple forms of illicit trade. The findings suggest that putting an end to these human rights abuses will only be possible by eradicating illicit trade and the demand for forced labor associated with it.

NY: Tract.Org. 2021. 52p.

By Jon Spencer, Rose Broad, Kauko Aromaa et. al.

This report was completed some time ago but for reasons beyond our control its publication has been delayed until now. The issue of the illegal movement of people retains its topicality and continues to be equally relevant as it was at the time of the project fieldwork. For example, recently, HEUNI has completed a further report on the FLEX project (Trafficking for Forced Labour and Labour Exploitation in Finland, Poland and Estonia, HEUNI Publication No. 68), and the report on trafficking for sexual exploitation published by The Swedish Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), accompanied by a Finnish country report published as HEUNI report No. 62 also indicate the importance of this area of research. The research reported on here was innovative as it included law enforcement practitioners and authority representatives in a constant dialogue with researchers. The aim was that this would allow for discussion of the data as it was gathered throughout the project. The intention was that data collection and interpretation formed a permanently iterative, self-correcting process and to some extent this was achieved. It was also an aim that the Expert Groups created for the project would continue once the research phase was completed in order to maximise the sharing of information and to sustain a dialogue between different professional groups. This aim proved to be over optimistic as there were too many problems caused by information sharing. It would seem that without external pressure and support, such formal cross-authority forms of co-operation do not survive spontaneously. The same could be observed in the context of the FLEX project. Our conclusion is that should such “horizontal” groups be created they will only continue if there is a budget and a responsible coordinating body established on a permanent basis. If not, the sustainability of such co-operative relationships is low.

Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI), 2011. 110p.

National Research Council.

Despite efforts to reduce drug consumption in the United States over the past 35 years, drugs are just as cheap and available as they have ever been. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines continue to cause great harm in the country, particularly in minority communities in the major cities. Marijuana use remains a part of adolescent development for about half of the country's young people, although there is controversy about the extent of its harm.

Given the persistence of drug demand in the face of lengthy and expensive efforts to control the markets, the National Institute of Justice asked the National Research Council to undertake a study of current research on the demand for drugs in order to help better focus national efforts to reduce that demand.

This study complements the 2003 book, Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs by giving more attention to the sources of demand and assessing the potential of demand-side interventions to make a substantial difference to the nation's drug problems. Understanding the Demand for Illegal Drugs therefore focuses tightly on demand models in the field of economics and evaluates the data needs for advancing this relatively undeveloped area of investigation.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2010. 124p.

Edited by A.M. Lemieux.

The Poaching Diaries is an edited collection of contributions on wildlife crime prevention and wilderness problems. It is an outlet for practitioners, policy makers, and academics to tell stories that facilitate problem-solving.

The aim of The Poaching Diaries is to present ideas that help governments and civil society diversify their approach to wildlife protection to achieve lasting impacts. The focus of this volume is crime scripting, a useful process for unpacking problems and designing clever solutions. Crime scripts are generated by developing detailed, step-by-step accounts of very specific crimes, in the specific contexts and environments where they take place. These scripts capture the full process of committing a crime, including steps taken before and after the criminal act itself. This is useful for identifying weak points in the chain of events to focus prevention strategies. For example, a subway pickpocketing event is part of a larger process, in which the offender has many decisions to make and actions to complete; one of these actions could be loitering on platforms to find victims. Looking at this stage in the crime script, a disruption strategy might focus on limiting access to subway stations for individuals without a valid ticket. This would make it harder, or at least more expensive, for pickpockets to work and therefore a less attractive environment for crime.

Phoenix, AZ: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Arizona State University, 2020. 126[p.

By Nick van Doormaal

Wildlife crime is not a single event, but rather a chain of crime events, as depicted in Figure 1.1 and adapted from Moreto and Lemieux (2015) and ‘t Sas-Rolfes et al. (2019). Poaching, the illegal taking of wild flora and fauna, is the first event in a series of crimes that supply the demand for illicit wildlife products. After a poaching event, wildlife will typically be processed, transported to markets, traded, and consumed by the end user. Depending on the context, a number of different people or groups of people can be involved at various stages of the wildlife crime chain. The first stage of the wildlife crime chain will almost always start with a motivated poacher trying to illegally obtain a wildlife product inside a protected area. To prevent this product from entering the market, robust security of protected areas is essential. The studies in this dissertation focus on the poaching stage

Amsterdam: Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), 2020. 168p.

By A.M. Lemieux & R.S.A. Pickles

As an officer for a national wildlife authority, you may experience déjà vu. You arrest poacher after poacher but the poaching threat in your park is not decreasing. You get called out to deal with crop raiding animals, but despite culling and translocation, each year there are more callouts. You are probably not alone in thinking ‘if we had more patrol teams…or faster response vehicles…or more money for operations, we could solve our problems’. Instead you have a restricted budget and the public expect you to deal with a broad range of wildlife problems, some of which use a lot of time and resources but do not seem to change. What’s more, you’re probably aware many wildlife protection problems are getting worse. Poaching and trafficking of wildlife for pets, food, ornaments or medicine is increasing across the world. There’s also more conflict between wildlife and people as they compete with one another for land and resources. Many of the problems you’ll be asked to solve are complex and you might find your organization’s traditional approaches need updating. It’s time to try something new. Problem-oriented policing was developed to help police officers find ways of reducing crime without substantial additional resources. A problem-oriented approach (a) supports ground-up initiatives addressing the context of a specific problem, (b) encourages innovative solutions beyond the criminal justice system, and (c) promotes collaboration within and beyond your agency. We think this approach has a lot to offer wildlife authorities and can be integrated with ongoing conservation strategies

Phoenix, AZ: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Arizona State University, 2020. 31p.

By M. Sosnowski; K. Everatt; R. Pickles; G. Whittington-Jones; A. Lemieux.

Unsustainable and illegal bushmeat hunting constitute the most serious threat to many wildlife populations across Africa. Bushmeat hunting is responsible for the significant depletion of ungulate populations across more than half of African protected areas, and the decline of overall wildlife populations across almost all West and Central African protected areas. Targeted bushmeat hunting is also driving populations of lowland gorillas, drills, Press red colobus and other threatened primates towards local extinction. Bushmeat hunting is nevertheless likely to be widely under-reported.

Indirect harms. Depletion of ungulate prey caused by bushmeat hunting is the greatest threat to the conservation of lions across much of Africa and is an important threat to other large carnivores, such as leopards, cheetahs, Africa wild dogs, and spotted hyena. Overhunting of ecosystem engineers such as elephants, gorillas and hippos, can reduce tree recruitment, causing altered forest structure and reduced carbon sequestration.

Phoenix, AZ: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Arizona State University, 2021. 47p.

By Marina Foltea. This book assesses the consequences of Brexit for the control of illicit trade in tobacco products in the UK and EU. Based on the currently applicable legal framework, it examines the significance of a possible non-application of the acquis communautaire in the UK in matters relating to anti-illicit trade in tobacco legislation. It also analyses the modes of future cooperation between the UK and the EU in this area, as well as possible regulatory scenarios and their consequences. The book comprises six main sections. After the introduction (Section 1), Section 2 discusses the state of play of Brexit and possible outcomes of Article 50 of the Treaty of European Union procedure. Section 3 illustrates the data and trends of illicit tobacco trade in the UK. Section 4 describes the relevant legal (e.g. trade and fiscal measures) and enforcement frameworks in the UK and suggests possible post-Brexit scenarios in control of tobacco illicit trade. Section 5 focuses on the relevance of arrangements between governments and the tobacco industry in the control of illicit trade. Section 6 then analyses the relevance of key EU and global anti-illicit trade initiatives. Lastly, Section 7 the book offers some recommendations and conclusions on how the UK could control illicit trade in tobacco after Brexit Cham: Springer, 2020. 89p.

A Comparative Perspective. Edited by Celina Nowak. This chapter outlines the framework of the research presented in this volume. It starts with a notion that national criminal policies on illicit tobacco trade are a part of the national tobacco control policy, and at the same time a part of a general national criminal policy and points to the need for an in-depth research of national criminal laws in this regard. It presents the scope of the research, which consists in a comparative analysis about the illicit tobacco trade and about efforts to counteract that trade in six EU Member States—four post-communist states (Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Romania), on the Eastern border of the Union and two “old” EU Member States (Germany, Italy). Springer. (2021) 283p.