By INTERPOL and ENACT Africa

Across the globe, the proliferation of new armed groups (including rebels, militias, criminal groups and gangs) has made conflict prevention and resolution even more complex . Armed groups are diversifying their revenues, which are increasingly based on organized crime activities . Organized Crime Groups (OCGs) often benefit from the turmoil of armed conflicts and violence. They can engage in violence to protect their illicit business, undermining national economic development and security. Furthermore, OCGs can team up with armed groups to access and control natural resources, competing with the state to provide public goods or even protection to their community. Different situations of violent conflict affect countries in the Eastern African region. Crime dynamics that emerge from instability in one country of the region can spill over into a neighbouring country, posing a threat to regional peace and security. The emergence of hybrid criminal groups engaged in transnational organized crime and in armed conflict most likely represents a relevant dimension of contemporary conflict in Eastern Africa. Yet, the knowledge on the multiple ways in which OCGs prey, or even amplify, local conflicts for their own benefit remains limited. In many instances, the scale of criminal activities in Eastern Africa contributes to an increase in the risk of conflict or in its prolongation. Organized crime thrives in conflict and other situations of violence in the region when goods and supplies are scarce, filling the demand often in association with armed groups. In some cases, revenue from criminal activities enables armed groups to finance their activities. The illicit circulation of weapons in the region from and into conflict-affected settings fuels violence and criminal activities. Information suggests that in some occasions, armed groups and OCGs collude to smuggle goods, migrants and drugs through the region and beyond. Moreover, the illicit extraction, control and taxation of natural resources in the region is often a source of revenue for armed groups and often links them with criminal actors. Information shows that livestock theft, or cattle rustling, poses a serious threat to many countries in the region and fuels the increase in the demand for small arms and light weapons in two aspects: for fighters to steal cattle and for ranchers to protect their livestock against such attacks. Higher levels of violence have been reported in cattle rustling cases affecting local economies and security. Organized violence for profit continues to affect Eastern Africa. Kidnapping for ransom, looting, threats and sexual gender-based violence are among the most reported incidents in the region. The driving factors for those crimes are sometimes difficult to discern and involve a combination of reasons such as economic gain, firearms sourcing (notably for cases of looting security forces), intention to control a community or territory. Illicit financial flows, and particularly, illicit taxation, allow OCGs and armed groups to generate revenue through commodity taxes, by imposing taxes on the community to move through certain areas or to run their business

Lyon, France: INTERPOL, 2021. 32p

By Kaitlyn Sill and Paul A. Haskins.

This article originally appeared in Police Chief and is reposted here with permission from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Hate crimes harm whole communities. They are message crimes that tell all members of a group—not just the immediate victims—that they are unwelcome and at risk.

The damage that bias victimization causes multiplies when victims and justice agencies don’t recognize or report hate crimes as such. In addition, in cases for which law enforcement agencies fail to respond to or investigate hate crimes, relationships between law enforcement and affected communities can suffer, and public trust in police can erode.[1]

While it is known that hate crimes are underreported throughout the United States, there is not a clear understanding of exactly why reporting rates are low, to what extent, and what might be done to improve them. An even more elementary question, with no single answer, is: What constitutes a hate crime? Different state statutes and law enforcement agencies have different answers to that question, which further complicates the task of identifying hate crimes and harmonizing hate crime data collection and statistics.

By Kingsley Madueke | Lawan Danjuma Adamu Katja Lindskov Jacobsen | Lucia Bird

Political violence is a major obstacle to democratic processes worldwide. Violence perpetrated in pursuit of electoral victory has widespread consequences: the destruction of lives and property, the displacement of people, undermining the credibility of the electoral process, and the erosion of public trust in democratic institutions.1 In countries throughout Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone, gangs play a pivotal role in political violence. When they are not perpetrating political violence, the same gangs often engage in a range of illicit markets.2 Yet, so far, analyses have not adequately scrutinized the link between gangs, political violence and illicit markets, predominantly understanding them as separate phenomena.3 The intersection between them has been understated, with important implications for response strategies. Background Since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, criminal gangs have played an increasingly pivotal role in driving political violence in the country. These criminal actors engage in a broad spectrum of activities, including intimidation of voters and political opponents, assassinations and disruption of political rallies on behalf of political actors. Gangs are remunerated in cash, material gifts and other favours from political actors, including state appointments and protection. Despite the deployment of security forces, election periods in Nigeria have long been characterized by high levels of violence – the 2023 elections were no exception.4 Although data collated regarding political violence in Nigeria broadly demonstrates a decrease in lives lost compared to previous electoral cycles, the number of violent incidents recorded has grown. Furthermore, the research presented in this report underscores that number of incidents of political violence fails to capture the full impact of political violence in determining Nigeria’s most recent political outcomes. Disenfranchisement was a clear consequence of covert forms of threat and intimidation: the 2023 elections saw the lowest voter turnout in Nigeria’s history, with President Bola Tinubu’s mandate effectively granted by less than 10% of Nigeria’s electorate. Though electoral violence is a countrywide concern in Nigeria, Kano in the north and Rivers in the south are repeatedly among the states hit hardest by political violence. In 2023 both became flashpoints for election violence.5 Both states are highly politically competitive and have a strong presence of criminal gangs with links to politicians, which play a leading role in electoral violence. The long history of election violence, coupled with the incidents of attacks and clashes leading up to and during the 2023 elections, had a major impact on voter turnout, the voting process and, consequently, the outcome of the elections in these areas Criminal gangs are not the only actors that have been associated with violence in Nigeria. For example, different groups, including violent extremist organizations such as Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'adati wal-Jihad (JAS), armed bandits in the north, as well as secessionists such as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the south-east have allegedly been involved in violence in different parts of the country. However, this report focuses on criminal gangs because they have featured more prominently in election-related violence and they have comparatively deeper roots in the country’s social and political landscape in the states under study. As case studies, the situations in Kano and Rivers demonstrate that political violence in Nigeria cannot be dismissed as a phenomenon limited to a particular geography or political party. The states are positioned in different regions, beset by different criminal and conflict dynamics, and have contrasting histories of political affiliation. Yet the centrality of political violence – and the pivotal interlinkages between crime and politics it reveals – is a common thread corroding democratic processes across both states, and Nigeria as a whole. In Kano and Rivers, the current dynamics of political violence emerged when political parties contracted elements of pre-existing groups (hunters’ associations and cult groups, respectively) to attack opponents, voters and election officials. The contracted groups benefited from this political alignment, and over time there emerged a mutually beneficial ecosystem between gangs and politicians. This ecosystem – the exact contours of which are shaped by complex local factors – is highly damaging for the Nigeria’s democracy. The two case studies presented in this report attempt to untangle this complex ecosystem and explore key questions: did gangs or political violence emerge first? What happens to gangs on the losing side of the political contest? Furthermore, elections are cyclical, and political gangs seem poised to service the demands of their political contractors at each four-year interlude. But what do these gangs do in the interim? This question – what do political thugs do when they are not doing political violence?6 – underpinned this research. Criminal markets provided the answer. This report argues that outside of election cycles, criminal gangs involved in political violence are engaged in a range of illicit markets for their sustainability and resilience. The link between political violence and illicit markets is a significant concern as it provides criminal actors with political cover and access to the means to perpetrate further acts of violence and criminality. Exploring the implications of such intersections for politics and governance, and identifying potential ways to disrupt such links, is therefore urgently required.

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023. 47p.

By John Pitts

County Lines are criminal networks based mainly in cities that export illegal drugs to one or more out-of-town locations. The organisers use dedicated mobile phone lines to take orders from buyers, and children and vulnerable adults to transport, store and deliver the drugs. County Lines organisers may use coercion, intimidation and violence (including sexual violence) to control this workforce. Initially, the ‘Youngers’, the children involved, may be given money, phones or expensive trainers, but are then told they must repay this by working for the County Lines gang. Sometimes the ‘Elders’, the organisers, arrange for them to be robbed of the drugs they are carrying so that they become indebted. If they protest, they may be told to keep working to pay off the debt or they, and their families, will be subject to violent retribution. The ‘Youngers’, who deliver the drugs, risk being apprehended by the police, assaulted and robbed by their customers or by members of rival gangs (Andell and Pitts, 2018; Harding, 2020). This Academic Insights paper sets out how County Lines operations have developed and evolved over recent years. Focus is then given to multi-agency ways of tackling County Lines which involve probation and youth offending services.

Academic Insights, 2021.01. Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation , 2021. 15p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Observatory on Smuggling of Migrants.

Our new snapshot, produced in the context of a partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Observatory on Smuggling of Migrants, examines respondents’ reasons for leaving their country of origin, access to smuggling services, and protection incidents experienced en route, as well as the involvement of state officials in smuggling between Cambodia-Thailand and Lao PDR-Thailand.

Key findings include:

• Almost all Cambodian respondents (96%) and most Laotian respondents (84%) used smugglers to facilitate their migration to Thailand.

• Smuggling dynamics vary significantly between Cambodian and Laotian respondents: Cambodians primarily used smugglers due to a lack of knowledge of alternatives (79%), while most Laotians were motivated by the perception that using smugglers would be easier (63%).

• Cambodian respondents more often reported the involvement of state officials in smuggling (63%) than Laotian respondents (13%).

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Observatory on Smuggling of Migrants. 2023, 12p.

By Charles M. Katz , Anthony Harriott, and E.C. Hedberg

The article examines a gang-related peace initiative instituted in Greater August Town, Jamaica. Our objective was to understand the negotiation processes and determine whether the gang truce resulted in the desired outcome: a reduction in homicide. Bivariate analyses showed a significant decline in homicides immediately following the truce. Upon closer examination, however, comparing change in the target area to the balance areas in Jamaica and accounting for temporal trends, we found that the decline in homicide was part of a larger nationwide decline in violence and that the gang truce was not responsible for the decline. The only significant effect was the possibility that homicides were displaced outside the target area for a brief period of time.

International Criminal Justice Review 35(2): 2022.

y Adam Baird , Matthew Louis Bishop , Dylan Kerrigan

The Southern Caribbean became a key hemispheric drug transhipment point in the late 1990s, to which the alarmingly high level of homicidal violence in Trinidad is often attributed. Existing research, concentrated in criminology and mainstream international relations, as well as the anti-drug policy establishment, tends to accept this correlation, framing the challenge as a typical post-Westphalian security threat. However, conventional accounts struggle to explain why murders have continued to rise even as the relative salience of narcotrafficking has actually declined. By consciously disentangling the main variables, we advance a more nuanced empirical account of how ‘the local’ is both inserted into and mediates the impact of ‘the global’. Relatively little violence can be ascribed to the drug trade directly: cocaine frequently transits through Trinidad peacefully, whereas firearms stubbornly remain within a distinctive geostrategic context we term a ‘weapons sink’. The ensuing murders are driven by the ways in which these ‘residues’ of the trade reconstitute the domestic gangscape. As guns filter inexorably into the community, they reshape the norms and practices underpinning acceptable and anticipated gang behaviour, generating specifically ‘residual’ forms of violence that are not new in genesis, but rather draw on long historical antecedents to exacerbate the homicide panorama. Our analysis emphasises the importance of taking firearms more seriously in understanding the diversity of historically constituted violences in places that appear to resemble—but differ to—the predominant Latin American cases from which the conventional wisdom about supposed ‘drug violence’ is generally distilled.

Political Geography. Volume 106, October 2023, 102966

By Adam Baird, Matthew Louis Bishop & Dylan Kerrigan

The murder rate in Port of Spain, Trinidad, rose dramatically around the turn of the millennium, driven overwhelmingly by young men in gangs in the city’s poor neighborhoods. The literature frequently suggests a causal relationship between gang violence and rising transnational drug flows through Trinidad during this period. However, this is only part of a complex picture and misses the crucial mediating effect of evolving male identities in contexts of pronounced exclusion. Using original data, this article argues that historically marginalized “social terrains” are particularly vulnerable to violence epidemics when exposed to the influence of transnational drug and gun trafficking. When combined with easily available weapons, contextually constructed male hegemonic orders that resonate with the past act as catalysts for contemporary gang violence within those milieus. The study contributes a new empirical body of work on urban violence in Trinidad and the first masculinities-specific analysis of this phenomenon. We argue that contemporary gang culture is a historically rooted, contextually legitimated, male hegemonic street project in the urban margins of Port of Spain.

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2021.

By Adam Baird

Belize has one of the highest homicide rates in the world; however, the gangs at the heart of this violence have rarely been studied. Using a masculinities lens and original empirical data, this article explores how Blood and Crip “gang transnationalism” from the United States of America flourished in Belize City. Gang transnationalism is understood as a “transnational masculinity” that makes cultural connections between local settings of urban exclusion. On one hand, social terrains in Belize City generated masculine vulnerabilities to the foreign gang as an identity package with the power to reconfigure positions of subordination; on the other, the establishment of male gang practices with a distinct hegemonic shape, galvanized violence and a patriarchy of the streets in already marginalized communities. This article adds a new body of work on gangs in Belize, and gang transnationalism, whilst contributing to theoretical discussions around the global to local dynamics of hegemonic masculinities discussed by Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) and Messerschmidt (2018).

Men and Masculinities Volume 24, Issue 3. 1-21 , 2019

2021 Durham Community Gang Assessment

By Michelle Young

Beginning in 2021, the Durham Gang Reduction Strategy Steering Committee (GRSSC) commissioned an updated community gang assessment for Durham. The GRSSC community gang assessment used the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model Guide to Assessing Your Community’s Youth Gang Problem (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2009). This report presents five key findings and related recommendations arising from that exercise. Key finding 1: What is the most acute problem related to gangs/violence in Durham and where is it most acute? At least 12 census tracts/neighborhoods in Durham are currently affected by extremely high rates of violent person incidents (aggravated assault and homicide) that are up to 7.5 times higher than Durham’s overall rate per capita of these crimes. Eight of these census tracts have experienced high rates of violence since the last community gang assessment was conducted in Durham. Violence exposure in these areas is exacerbated by extreme poverty and exposure to other social vulnerabilities that have remained mostly unchanged since 2014. Key finding 2: Why are youth in Durham joining gangs? What risk factors locally must be addressed to keep youth out of gangs? Young people in Durham experience an elevated level of exposure to risk factors for gang involvement, including substance use, delinquency, the presence of gangs in their neighborhood and at school, family gang involvement, victimization, and exposure to violence. This level of risk exposure is higher for youth who enter the juvenile justice system and highest for gang involved individuals. Key finding 3: What is keeping young people in gangs? What must be addressed to help gang-involved individuals exit gangs? Research indicates that young people who join gangs become disconnected from mainstream pursuits. Gang involved individuals in Durham have difficulty exiting gangs because of high rates of school dropout, unemployment/underemployment, substance use, gang activity in the neighborhood, and a need to replace the social and emotional needs currently met by their gang. Key finding 4: How is this issue affecting the wider community? What should motivate policymakers to address the problem? People who live and work in Durham experience the gang issue very differently depending on their role and location. In some neighborhoods, gangs are deeply imbedded in the neighborhood’s culture which plays a key role in the decision to join a gang in Durham. Other neighborhoods experience gang issues indirectly. However, surveys across constituency groups indicates that the widespread nature of gang activity and community violence in Durham reduces quality of life for residents across the community. Key finding 5: How well is the current response to gangs working? What should be done differently in the future? All constituency groups that participated in this study described low levels of satisfaction with the current response to gangs and identified specific deficits that have caused this dissatisfaction. These issues include a failure to address the underlying conditions that give rise to gangs, a lack of awareness about the current responses to gangs across constituency groups, lack of information about the results of current strategies, and concerns about criminal justice policies. Recommendations Recommendation 1: Implement intensive, place-based strategies to address underlying social conditions that increase the vulnerability of children and youth in the most violence affected census tracts to gang involvement Recommendation 2: Implement comprehensive, intensive, and neighborhood-based service delivery specifically for gang-involved individuals in the highest violence neighborhoods. Recommendation 3: Because of the elevated level of gang exposure/involvement and youth risk exposure locally, Durham policymakers should expand available gang prevention and intervention programming, localize these services in the most violence/gang affected census tracts, and prioritize these services for children and youth who are at the highest level of risk of involvement in violence and gangs Recommendation 4: More regularly collect and report data that reflects the progress of the community’s gang violence reduction efforts. Recommendation 5: Institute standardized performance measures to track reductions in violence and improve existing criminogenic social conditions at the census tract level and more regularly report the outcomes attained by gang prevention, intervention and desistance strategies to policymakers and the community at the census tract level.

Wake Forest, NC: Michelle Young Consulting, 2022. 257p.

By Ross Deuchar

This article explores the links between gangs, masculinity, religion, spirituality and desistance from an international perspective. It presents insights from life history interviews conducted with a small sample of 17 male reforming gang members in Denmark who had become immersed in a holistic spiritual intervention programme that foregrounded meditation, yoga and dynamic breathing techniques. Engagement with the programme enabled the men to begin to perform broader versions of masculinity, experience improved mental health and well-being and develop a greater commitment to criminal desistance. Links with religious and spiritual engagement are discussed, and policy implications for the UK gang context included.

Youth JusticeVolume 20, Issue 1-2, April-August 2020, Pages 113-127

By Sarah Frisby-Osman and Jane L. Wood

Mental health difficulties, conduct problems, and emotional maladjustment predict a range of negative outcomes, and this may include gang involvement. However, few studies have examined how behavioral, mental health, socio-cognitive, and emotional factors all relate to adolescent gang involvement. This study examined 91 adolescents to compare non-gang with gang-involved youth on their conduct problems, emotional distress, guilt-proneness, anxiety and depression, and use of moral disengagement and rumination. Analyses revealed that gang-involved youth had higher levels of anxiety, depression, moral disengagement, and rumination. Gang-involved youth also had higher levels of conduct disorder and exposure to violence, but they did not differ from non-gang youth on levels of emotional distress and guiltproneness. Discriminant function analysis further showed that conduct problems, moral disengagement, and rumination were the most important predictors of gang involvement. Discussion focuses on how intervention and prevention efforts to tackle gang involvement need to consider the mental health and behavioral needs of gang-involved youth. Further research is also needed to build an evidence base that identifies the cause/effect relationship between mental health and gang involvement to inform the best practice when tackling gang membership

Youth Justice 2020, Vol. 20(1-2) 93–112

By William J. Aceves

On the eve of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, a small group of gang leaders and community activists drafted an agreement to curtail violence in south Los Angeles. Several gangs in Watts accepted the truce and established a cease-fire agreement. By most accounts, the 1992 Watts Gang Treaty succeeded in reducing gang violence in Los Angeles. Local activists attributed the reduction in shootings to the Treaty. Even law enforcement officials grudgingly recognized the Treaty’s contribution to reducing gang violence and a corresponding decrease in homicides. The origins of the Watts Gang Treaty can be traced to gang leaders recognizing that the devastating struggle between rival gangs was analogous to a military conflict—complete with “no-man’s land,” assault weapons, targeted killings, and civilian casualties—and, therefore, it required a diplomatic solution. Seeking inspiration from international conflict resolution efforts, gang members looked to the 1949 Armistice Agreement adopted by Egypt and Israel to end the Arab-Israeli War. The drafters of the Watts Gang Treaty mirrored the key provisions of the Armistice Agreement, including a cease-fire agreement and other confidence-building measures. The drafters then built a social movement to support the Treaty. This Article examines the origins, impact, and legacy of the Watts Gang Treaty. It also pursues a prescriptive agenda. It supports the study of hidden history that runs counter to the common narrative of power and privilege in the United States. Moreover, this Article argues that social movements can achieve meaningful change even in the face of poverty, violence, and structural racism.

Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review (CR-CL), Vol. 57, 2022. 63p.

By Europol and US Drug Enforcement Administration

The EU drug landscape is populated by a diverse range of criminal actors involved in the production, trafficking and distribution of a variety of illicit substances. These actors benefit from a number of criminal enablers and facilitators in their operations. In recent years, seizures of methamphetamine and cocaine linked to Mexican criminal actors have emerged as a prominent feature of the EU drug landscape. Mexican criminal actors and EU-based criminal networks have been working together to traffic both of these illicit drug types from Latin America to the EU.

This report delves into the activities of these criminals and their methods. Drug trafficking operations benefit from a number of different actors, such as brokers, cooks, envoys, intermediaries and money laundering service providers. Examples of the methods used by the criminals include the corruption of officials in the public and private sectors and the exploitation of legal business structures. The report also provides an outlook on potential threats that may develop in the future.

In the first initiative of this kind, Europol and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have issued this joint strategic product with the aim of expanding the intelligence picture on the involvement of Mexican criminal actors in the EU drug market.

The Hague: Europol and the DEA, 2022. 8p.

By J. Travis Donahoe

This paper studies the effects of shutting down prescribers, dispensers, and distributors that inappropriately handle prescription opioids on local opioid supply and mortality. With competitive supply, theory suggests the effects of closing any single supplier will be offset by substitution. Closing a supplier may have an effect on overall supply, however, if the targeted supplier is more lax with prescriptions than others or if the action has general deterrence effects. To examine enforcement empirically, I exploit differential timing of initial enforcement actions across areas following a federal expansion of enforcement in 2008. I show enforcement reduced overall opioid shipments by 20 percent in the average affected county for three years. Results further show that enforcement actions targeting distributors primarily reduced opioid shipments to pharmacies and clinics with suspicious order patterns. Overall, these findings demonstrate a large role for supplier enforcement to reduce harmful prescription opioid supply. Enforcement actions had heterogeneous effects on mortality. In Florida, which experienced the most enforcement, overdose death rates fell by 22 percent due to enforcement actions for five years. Outside of Florida, where enforcement was less intensive, overall mortality was unaffected. This heterogeneity is an important policy issue. (Job Market Paper)

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2022. 69p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Colombia’s counternarcotics policy choices have profound impact on consolidating peace in the wake of the 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia — Ejército del Pueblo, FARC) and on the building of an effective state. Strategies of forced or voluntary eradication of coca crops have proven ineffective. As evidence from around the world shows, a long-term comprehensive effort to promote alternative livelihoods for coca growers — integrated into rural development and supported by well-designed interdiction efforts, with eradication delayed until these alternative livelihoods are generating sustainable income — has the best prospects for producing peace and a capable state and for reducing drug production.

To achieve sustainable and robust reduction of illicit crop cultivation, Colombia must thus expand its timeline of drug policy and state-building intervention well beyond 15 years. To achieve any viable transformative effects, it will also have to concentrate resources to selected zones of strategic intervention and gradually connect them and expand them to encompass larger areas in state intervention efforts.

The alternative livelihoods approach requires a concerted effort to build international support, particularly with the United States. It also requires countering the objections of Colombia’s political right. Arguments can be framed around the ineffective and counterproductive outcomes of forced eradication, the demonstrated benefits of comprehensive alternatives livelihood combined with well-designed interdiction to reduce the power of criminal groups, and other counternarcotics priorities in the United States.

A zero-coca conceptualization that insists on eradication first and conditions development aid on prior eradication of coca jeopardizes peace-building and statebuilding. In Colombia and elsewhere in the world, it has consistently failed to produce a sustainable reduction of coca cultivation. Forced eradication undermines the peace deal with the FARC and the broader legitimacy and presence of the state by jeopardizing the state’s ability to establish meaningful presence in areas formerly dominated by nonstate armed groups and radicalizing communities and cocalero (coca cultivator) movements. Aerial spraying will only compound these problems; drones will not redress the negative political effects, even if somewhat increasing the precision of spraying.

Washington, DC: Brookings Foreign Policy , 2020. 30p.

By Jonathan Klick and John MacDonald

Objectives This study examines the impact of alcohol consumption in a Major League Baseball (MLB) stadium on area level counts of crime. The modal practice at MLB stadiums is to stop selling alcoholic beverages after the seventh inning. Baseball is not a timed game, so the duration between the last call for alcohol at the end of the seventh inning and the end of the game varies considerably, providing a unique natural experiment to estimate the relationship between alcohol consumption and crime near a stadium on game days. Methods Crime data were obtained from Philadelphia for the period 2006–2015 and geocoded to the area around the MLB stadium as well as popular sports bars. We rely on difference-in-differences regression models to estimate the change in crime on home game days around the stadium as the game time extends into extra innings to other areas of the city and around sports bars in Philadelphia relative to days when the baseball team plays away from home. Results When there are extra innings and more game-time after the seventh inning alcohol sales stoppage crime declines signifcantly around the stadium. The crime reduction beneft of the last call alcohol policy is undone when a complex of sports bars opens in the stadium parking lot in 2012. The results suggest that alcohol consumption during baseball games is a contributor to crime. Conclusions The fndings provide further support for environmental theories of crime that note the congregation of people in places with excessive alcohol consumption is a generator of violent crime in cities. The consumption of alcohol in MLB stadiums appears to increase crime.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology (2021) 37:813–834

By European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol

EU Drug Market: Amphetamine describes the European amphetamine market from production and trafficking, to distribution and use. It details the processes, materials and actors involved at different stages and levels of the market. Taking a threat assessment approach, the module identifies key issues and makes recommendations for action at EU and Member State level.

Amphetamine is the most common synthetic stimulant drug available on the European drug market and it competes with cocaine and a range of new psychoactive substances for a share of the profitable European Union (EU) stimulant drug market. The prevalence of amphetamine use is higher than methamphetamine in most EU Member States, with notable exceptions, such as Czechia and Slovakia. Illicit amphetamine products mostly consist of powders or pastes, usually mixed with other ingredients, such as lactose, dextrose or caffeine, but tablets containing amphetamine are also available. The estimated annual value of the retail market for amphetamine in the EU is at least EUR 1.1 billion, with a range of EUR 0.9 billion to EUR 1.4 billion.

The demand for amphetamine in the EU is met by European production concentrated largely in the Netherlands and Belgium, where production is complex, large-scale and based on the drug precursor BMK. BMK has some limited use in industry and can be diverted from legitimate sources or smuggled into the EU, but more frequently it is made from chemicals known as designer precursors imported from China. Some of the amphetamine produced in the EU is used to produce captagon tablets, which are mainly trafficked to consumer markets in the Middle East

Lisbon, Portugal: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol, 2023. 8p.

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

From July 2021 to June 2023, the Mekong Australia Partnership on Transnational Crime and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) organized an expert briefing series to enhance debate and collaboration on issues related to organized crime in the Mekong.

The outcome of the two-year briefing series was the creation of opportunities for discussion, collaboration and learning. It brought together a committed set of stakeholders working at the local, regional and international levels to reduce the harms of organized crime and helped build new partnerships while strengthening existing ones. The series enhanced the knowledge base on organized crime in the Mekong and helped bridge the gap between research and policy.

With the support of a dynamic set of stakeholders, the series explored some of the region’s most pertinent and pressing issues and their intersections globally.

Geneva, SWIT: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime 2023. 69p.

By Tihomir Bezlov | Atanas Rusev | Dardan Koçani

The war in Ukraine has spurred the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. According to EU border and coastguard agency Frontex, by the end of 2022, 15 million Ukrainian citizens had fled to Europe since the beginning of the war, with roughly 3 million choosing to stay.

While the unforeseen scale of the refugee crisis meant that much of the border authorities’ efforts and resources were occupied, people smuggling networks took advantage of the situation, and the number of irregular migrants from the Middle East travelling along the Western Balkan route soared. There are many contributing factors to this trend, but migrant smuggling has indeed resurfaced as the fastest-growing market for organized crime in the Balkan region. At the start of September 2022, Frontex reported that they had documented the highest number of irregular entries since 2016, with a 75% increase compared to the same period in the previous year. Thus, in 2022, the Western Balkan route became the most active European migration route, surpassing the Central and Western Mediterranean routes.

This paper assesses the factors that contributed to the emergence of the Western Balkan route as the most critical for irregular migration to the EU during 2022, focusing in particular on the impact of the war in Ukraine on refugee flows from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its implications for the future. It analyzes how, if anything, refugee flows from Ukraine have affected pre-existing movements of migrants from MENA countries on the Western Balkan route indirectly, exacerbating dynamics and network operations. It also estimates the overall number of irregular migrants smuggled along the Western Balkan route since 2016, describes the evolution of smuggling networks in 2022 and assesses the implications for South Eastern Europe.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime 2023. 3p.