By Andrew Scourfield, Catherine Flick, Jack Ross, David M. Wood, Natalie Thurtle, Darryl Stellmach & Paul I. Dargan

Changes in legislation have affected supply routes of new psychoactive substances such as synthetic cannabinoids with evidence of supply over the darknet. We identified darknet drug markets using an index database and Tor Browser to access markets. We identified SC in product listings using a custom-programmed script. We collected data at bimonthly intervals (August 2016–April 2017). Eleven darknet markets listed SC for sale, the largest number from China, UK, US, Netherlands, and Germany. Formulations available were high purity powder/crystal, smoking preparations and vape preparations. The top five listed compounds from China across the time points were FUB-AMB, ABD-FUBINACA, 5F-NPB-22, MAB-CHMINACA, and NM-2201. 5F-CUMYL4CN-PINACA was unavailable at early time points but emerged during the study. Cost of high purity formulations from China ranged from 1.3 to 3.1 Euro per gram for quantities 1000 g. Europe and North America accounted for 99% smoking preparations predominantly in small packages (<50 g). SC are widely available on the darknet with availability changing over time. High purity formulations are predominantly available from China in quantities up to kilograms with price per gram reducing with increased quantity. Small packages of ready-made smoking mixtures are available from Europe and North America.

Toxicology Communications, 3:1, 7-15, DOI: 10.1080/24734306.2018.1563739 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.10 , 2019.

By Alexandra Karden; Julian Strizek

Over the last decade, drug sales through cryptomarkets located on the so-called darknet have received increasing attention. This paper considers how web surveys might be used to provide insights concerning those people who purchase drugs on cryptomarkets. First, it analyses data from the European Web Survey on Drugs (EWSD), with a view to identifying differences between respondents who buy drugs on cryptomarkets and those who acquire drugs from other sources. The study shows that people using cryptomarkets as a usual source of supply were a small group of users in most participating countries, but that proportions differ significantly, and that buyers were more likely to be male and consume more substances on average. Second, the sampling of web survey respondents on the darknet is discussed based on a sampling strategy tested in Austria, highlighting the challenges and opportunities involved in undertaking survey recruitment on the darknet. The paper highlights the importance of building trust, establishing credibility and guaranteeing anonymity, since awareness of privacy issues is seemingly higher among darknet users than surface web users. By doing so, the authors show how people who buy drugs on cryptomarkets might be reached to improve their representation in future web surveys for drug data collection.

Lisbon: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. 2022. 9p.

By Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Flore Berger, Kingsley Madueke, Lucia Bird Ruiz Benitez de Lugo and Lyes Tagziria

Self-defence groups have proliferated across West Africa. While these groups are often considered key sources of resilience for local communities, they often pose major political and security concerns. Given their entrenchment in many contexts in the region, this report outlines what lessons can be learned from cross-continental experiences towards building a more effective framework to mitigate the risks and harness the benefits of self-defence groups.

Recommendations l ECOWAS should leverage its role as a regional normsetter by adopting and promoting a regional charter of principles for the regulation of armed self-defence groups. l States should prioritise diagnoses and dialogues to rebuild trust between state, communities and self-defence groups. l There are several key considerations that must be taken into account when states adopt a strategy of absorbing or legalising self-defence groups. l Impunity of self-defence group members must be effectively and publicly challenged, emphasising narratives around accountability, with clear mandates established. l Community and civil society oversight mechanisms for self-defence groups must be strengthened and engaged with by national policymakers. l Clearly defined demobilisation programmes and ‘exit strategies’ must be crafted to ensure long-term sustainable peace.

OCWAR-T::Organised Crime: West African Response to Trafficking. 2024. 28p.

By Alistair Fraser, Keir Irwin-Rogers, Fern Gillon, Susan McVie, Tilman Schwarze

Violence is a critical issue around the world. In addition to the high financial costs, it takes a heavy toll on community wellbeing. Young people are most commonly affected by violence, with the World Health Organisation estimating that 43% of global homicides involve people aged 10-29 (WHO 2016). Over the last two decades, Scotland has witnessed a remarkable reduction in serious violence, including homicide, and has managed to sustain this while rates of violence in other parts of the UK have increased. This has led to an increasing consensus around Scotland’s ‘public health approach’ to violence reduction and heavy investment in specialist violence reduction units across England and Wales. Despite the perceived success of the Scottish approach, however, there has to date been a lack of evidence on the causes of violence reduction in Scotland. While it is clear that lessons can be learned, there is confusion over what public health approaches are, how they work, and the conditions under which such ideas can travel. This briefing paper aims to summarise the evidence-base on violence reduction in Scotland and highlight key lessons for other jurisdictions. It is based on a three-year research project, funded by the ESRC, involving detailed analysis of statistical data on violence, 190 interviews with senior stakeholders and community participants across the UK, reviews of Scottish Government policy, and case-studies with communities affected by violence. The briefing focuses on lessons that can be drawn from Scotland’s violence reduction journey, answering four basic questions: (1) What has changed? (2) Why did it change? (3) Where are we now and (4) Where do we go from here?

Glasgow: Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, 2024. 32p.

By Amer Smailbegovic , Nedzad Korajlic, Marija Lucic-Catic, Muamer Kavazovic

ABSTRACT: The Penal-Correctional Institution of the Enclosed Type in Zenica (Kazneno-popravni zavod zatvorenog tipa Zenica), Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been in continuous operation for over 130 years and is currently the largest and most-diverse penal institution in the country. With 714 inmates serving lengthy sentences (up to 40 years) for the variety of serious offenses (including terrorism), the issue of narcotics use, traffic and trade has been encountered and countered, particularly in the last decade. The types of drugs encountered in the institution range from prescription drugs (i.e. buprenorphine, methadone), to “heavy” narcotics (i.e. heroin, morphine, speed. The type, quantity and frequency of drug use and seizure shows certain seasonal and temporal effects and is associated with the inmate-furlough periods, awarded for good behavior. Many inmates use this privilege to bring narcotics into the facility. Some of the encountered substances have been seized from the facility visitors and even from the prison staff, in the past five years, but the charges have been generally dismissed by the prosecutors for the lack of evidence. An average seizure is about ten grams per incident, and the number of seizures has been continuous, suggesting considerable financial interest and gain for the drugs to enter the institution. There are various measures proposed to counter the traffic and limit the purchases, however the inmate population is very apt in using the current legal regulations and EU-mandates to circumvent the proposed countermeasures. This study is presenting some of the findings, directions and recommendations for combating the drug-traffic within the correctional institution.

American Journal of Qualitative Research August 2020, Vol.4 No. 2, pp. 20-26

By Federico Bertola

Drug trafficking on darknet based marketplaces has become a highly concerning topic in law enforcement activities, recently. Even though Darkmarkets represent only a tiny fraction of the global drug trade, they are changing the drug markets social networks, introducing a new paradigm of the link between vendors and buyers of drugs. The aim of this study is to critically review the darkmarkets’ ecosystem and the previous literature regarding these new marketplaces, trying to investigate how the drug trade is changing with these new technologies, and the role of organised crime (OC) in these new illegal markets. And trying to understand how and whether is it involved OC on these cyber drug markets and the chain behind them. Despite opinions of part of the academy, the results show that there are no empirical evidences of direct involvement of OC as vendors in darkmarkets. However, there are evidences of an indirect role of OC in darknet drug trafficking, as supplier of illegal drugs to the online-vendors.

AM J QUALITATIVE RES, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Special Issue), pp. 27-34, 2020.

By Spencer Chainey and Robert Muggah

Despite numerous attempts to decrease homicides in the Latin American region, high homicide levels have persisted. Examining four cities in Rio de Janeiro, the research reveals the intense geographic concentration of homicides in each city, but illustrates differences in the extent of homicide concentration when using a variety of crime concentration measures. Single events involving multiple homicides and a homicide near repeat pattern are observed, with almost all these incidents taking place in areas of homicide concentration. The findings suggest that programmes targeted to areas of homicide concentration, including interventions that suppress the likelihood of future incidents, could decrease homicides.

The Police Journal, 95(2), 255-275. 2022.

By Lasha Gogidze

Under the current government, Uzbekistan is undergoing reforms to shift from a Soviet-style governance system to an open-market economy. Despite progress, the country remains an authoritarian state, marked by pervasive corruption in sectors like healthcare and education. Key institutions, influenced by the executive branch, lack due process, enabling arrests of activists and journalists on questionable charges. The civic space is restricted, with human rights defenders and journalists facing persecution for exposing government corruption. While reforms are underway, challenges persist in establishing transparency and democracy in Uzbekistan's governance model.

Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer, 2023. 22p.

 By Khachik Harutyunyan and Caitlin Maslen   

After a protracted conflict and a period of self-rule from 2005, South Sudan is now the world’s most recent sovereign country. The young state faces considerable governance challenges; it regularly ranks at or near the bottom of international corruption indices. Corruption is systemic across all levels of government and pervades nearly every economic sector, and perpetrators enjoy widespread impunity. As such, it takes a heavy toll on the populace by diverting the wealth from the country’s extensive oil reserves into private pockets instead of public service provision or gross fixed capital formation. This kleptocratic dynamic is embodied in scandals such as the Cash Grab and Dura Saga scandals. The international community has called on the South Sudanese government to take stronger action to tackle corruption. However, progress has been slow, and corruption remains a major challenge for South Sudan's future development  

Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer, 2023. 25p.

 By David Olusegun Sotola and Roberto Martinez B. Kukutschka  

Corruption in Sierra Leone remains a pervasive challenge. Since the end of the civil war in 2002, successive governments have made efforts to tackle corruption and hold perpetrators, especially those from the previous government, accountable, but challenges remain. Anti-corruption efforts have focused on amending laws, institutional frameworks and the establishment of a special anti-corruption judicial division but concerns about the backsliding of democracy in the country, weak checks on the power of the executive and the politicisation of the anti-corruption cause make it difficult to counter corruption effectively.

 Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2023. 21p.

By Lasha Gogidze

The election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr, nicknamed “Bongbong”, as the President of the Philippines in May 2022 has sustained fears of state capture by oligarchic family clans, widespread grand corruption and human rights abuses, all of which marred the rule of his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the country’s former dictator who ruled from 1965 until 1986. Those fears appear to have been substantiated by continued extrajudicial killings, arrests of communist-linked leaders and activists, as well as the Marcos families’ unpaid taxes and damages to U.S. courts from human rights cases, leading to fears that this means further entrenchment of impunity.

 Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer, 2023. 25p.

By Caitlin Maslen  

There has been a rapid rise in the number of Mozambican universities in the past two decades, but corruption risks in these institutions and the research sector more broadly remains an under-examined area. Identified risks include political manipulation of university affairs by government, mismanagement of research grant funds and a lack of independence of the country’s quality assurance body. There are also reports of other forms of corruption such as bribery, plagiarism, academic fraud and sextortion for grades within universities. Several mitigation measures can be put into place to strengthen the integrity of the system, and these include accountability mechanisms within universities and research institutions, independence and increased capacity of the CNAQ, anti-plagiarism policies and tools, sanctions for academic dishonesty, anti-corruption clauses in research grant agreements, compliance assessments of universities and research institutions, and enhanced whistleblower protection.

 Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2023. 21p.

By Jackson Oldfield   

Corruption is widespread in Nigeria, where patronage networks and foreign actors play a significant role. Drivers of corruption include neo-patrimonialism and the “resource curse” – referring to the country’s abundance of natural resources. Bribery and other forms of corruption occur in many sectors, including public administration, the judiciary, the electricity sector, and extractive industries. Although several new anti-corruption laws have recently been introduced, weaknesses in relevant institutions have undermined their effectiveness. Despite these challenges, anti-corruption actors, such as civil society organisations, continue addressing corruption as a priority and have had notable achievements, particularly in the area of asset recovery.

 Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2023). 25p.

By Mathias Bak

Yemen's ongoing conflict has transformed into an economic battle, with various factions fighting over crucial resources, such as aid flows and control over state resources. The war economy has intensified existing corruption challenges and created avenues for illicit wealth accumulation for new power brokers and previously less powerful networks. However, this takeover of the state has not fundamentally changed the nature of the systematic corruption that has plagued Yemen long before 2014.

Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2024:1)

By Vaclav Prusa   

In 2023, President Mnangagwa secured a second term amid allegations of election irregularities and corruption in Zimbabwe. Despite anti-corruption efforts, challenges include political interference and resource constraints, hindering transparency. Though there have been efforts to address corruption in the natural resources sector, progress in prosecuting politically exposed persons and recovering stolen assets has been uneven. Likewise, hopes for reform since Mnangagwa's 2017 presidency have been tempered by enduring corruption, economic challenges, and human rights abuses. And illicit financial flows, notably linked to corruption in mining, timber, and wildlife, pose a significant international threat as they have drained billions of dollars from the country. Though civil society and independent media play crucial roles in exposing corruption, initiatives such as The Patriot Act, introduced in 2023, raises concerns about suppressing dissent and investigative journalism.

Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, Norway ; Berlin: Transparency international, 2023. 26p.

By Rodrigo R. Soares and Danilo Souza

We document that oil-producing areas of Brazil experienced increases in crime during the period of increased economic growth driven by the 2000s oil boom. This challenges the understanding that the impact of income shocks on crime is driven primarily by the legal status of the market in question. Offshore oil production, refining, and distribution in Brazil are concentrated in large firms, without scope for income contestability. We show that various equilibrium effects of the shock – such as increased inequality, urbanization, illegal goods presence, and deterioration in public goods provision – are likely to have contributed to the increase in crime.

Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, 2023. 47p.

By Chad Whelan, David Bright, and James Martin

The concept of organised cybercrime has been the subject of much debate over the last decade. Many researchers who have applied scholarly definitions of organised crime to cyber-criminal groups have concluded that such groups are not “organised criminal groups” and do not engage in “organised crime”. This paper adopts a different perspective to argue that certain cyber-criminal groups involved in ransomware can and should be considered organised crime if a more contemporary and flexible framework for conceptualising organised crime is adopted. We make this argument using three primary domains of organised crime first described by von Lampe: criminal activities, offender social structures, and extra-legal governance. We narrow in on the concepts of violence and extra-legal governance in particular as they have been interpreted to hold significant differences for criminal groups operating in physical and digital domains. The paper argues that it is time to move on from criminological debates regarding whether organised cybercrime can exist to focus on the many rich questions that researchers can take from organised crime scholarship and apply to cyber-criminal groups. We put forward a reconceptualisation of organised cybercrime towards this end.

Journal of Criminology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/26338076231199793, Preprint 2023.

By Jonathan Lusthaus, Jaap van Oss, and Philipp Amann

The relative glut of data on cybercriminal forums has led to a growing understanding of the functioning of these virtual marketplaces. But with a focus on illicit online trading, less attention has been paid to the structures of groups that carry out cybercrimes in an operational sense. In economic parlance, some such groups may be known as ‘firms’. This concept has been a significant part of the literature on more traditional forms of organised crime, but is not widely discussed in the cybercrime discourse. The focus of this article is, by way of a case study of the Gozi malware group, to explore the applicability of the concept of firms to the novel environment of cybercrime.

European Journal of Criminology, 20(5), 1701-1718. https://doi.org/10.1177/14773708221077615

Sergi, Anna

This research is linked to studies on the criminal mobility of the 'ndrangheta in Australia. Starting from extensive research in the field, and from a critique of the concept of ethnicity and its links with organised crime in Australia, this work reflects on the political interests of the Calabrian clans in Australia. Some clans can maintain ties with powers and professional elites also by exploiting "ethnic solidarity” within the migrant community

‘ndrangheta e “ricerca del potere”: riflessioni su mafia e potere politico in Australia. Rivista di studi e ricerche sulla criminalità organizzata, 6 (4). (2021) pp. 110-136

Sergi, Anna

Attention to the Calabrian mafia, the ‘ndrangheta, has been increasing across law enforcement authorities around the world. This paper aims at bringing forward a theoretical and operational conversation on how to best approach, from a policing perspective, what is a complex clan-based criminality able to operate simultaneously in different states. The paper will therefore formulate a preliminary framework for strategies focusing on the policing of mafia dynasties. It will do so by identifying how ‘ndrangheta clans can be studied as family dynasties, including in their assessment also the factors of family life (familiness) that can facilitate or obstruct the dynasty’s success. By looking at ‘ndrangheta clans as family dynasties, we can inform a framework that cuts through the most common policing aims and strategies against organised crime, as shared by states involved in current anti-mafia efforts.

‘Ndrangheta Dynasties: A Conceptual and Operational Framework for the Cross-Border Policing of the Calabrian Mafia. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 15 (2). (2021) pp. 1522-1536.