By ENACT

In the last two decades the percentage of imprisoned women offenders is growing globally, at a faster rate than imprisoned male offenders. Such global increase raises the question as to whether the same can be observed on the African continent . Information suggests that transnational organized crime (TOC) affects African women and girls differently than African men and boys. It is crucial to learn how and if men and women behave differently in TOC in Africa in order to uncover the main drivers of these differences and adapt policing methodology accordingly. While gendered data continues to be insufficiently reported upon by law enforcement authorities in Africa, the assessment suggests that African law enforcement authorities are possibly under -investigating and under -estimating the involvement of African women in TOC. African law enforcement authorities likely continue to perceive them as victims or accomplices only. They are possibly rarely seen as the criminals themselves and less so as being the organizers, leaders, traffickers or recruiters. This gap in police investigations is indeed known to be exploited to the benefit of organized crime as women are more likely to go under the radar. The assessment draws attention to the common features of African female offenders based on available data to share insights and encourage police forces to reconsider their approach.

ENACT (Africa), 2021. 32p.

By ENACT

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. 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 and ENACT, 2022. 32p.

By Deborah Puccio-Den

“The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don’t know the Mafia. I’ve never seen it.” Mafiosi have often reacted this way to questions from journalists and law enforcement. Social scientists who study the Mafia usually try to pin down what it “really is,” thus fusing their work with their object. In Mafiacraft, Deborah Puccio-Den undertakes a new form of ethnographic inquiry that focuses not on answering “What is the Mafia?” but on the ontological, moral, and political effects of posing the question itself. Her starting point is that Mafia is not a readily nameable social fact but a problem of thought produced by the absence of words. Puccio-Den approaches covert activities using a model of “Mafiacraft,” which inverts the logic of witchcraft. If witchcraft revolves on the lethal power of speech, Mafiacraft depends on the deadly strength of silence. How do we write an ethnography of phenomena that cannot be named? Puccio-Den approaches this task with a fascinating anthropology of silence, breaking new ground for the study of the world’s most famous criminal organization.

Chicago: HAU Books, 2021. 295p.

By The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime

The purpose of Digest of Organized Crime Cases is to illustrate good practices in dealing with organized crime cases and in doing so, to, promote the practical implementation of the Organized Crime Convention and its Protocols. The Digest presents a compilation of illustrative cases and related good practices in criminalization, investigations, prosecution and legal experiences in dealing with organized crime and its various forms and manifestations. By providing relevant policy-makers, criminal justice officials, and investigative police with practical perspectives and insights based on expert practitioners' experience, and associated good practices, it is hoped that the Digest could serve those involved in complicated investigations and prosecutions of organized crime cases on how best to address the many pitfalls and challenges in order to conduct an efficient investigation and prosecution. Moreover, the Digest will help contribute to identifying good practice and common standards related to the investigation and prosecution of organized crime cases, while improving judicial understanding and strengthening international cooperation in criminal matters. The target reader group will be policymakers, judicial officials, central authorities and judicial/investigative police. Three Meetings of experts have been held in the course of 2011-2012: the first meeting was held in Rome, Italy, from 23-26 May 2011, the second one took place in Cartagena, Colombia, from the 28 November to the 02 December 2011, and the last one was held in Palermo, Italy, from 11-14 June 2012. The meetings were held in English, French, and Spanish and gathered approximately 30-40 experts from different countries and regions (at least three per region) with expertise in different legal systems and in specific aspects related to transnational organized crime, to present and comment relevant organized crime cases.

Vienna: UNODC, 2012. 154p.

By The U.S. National Institute of Justice

The National Institute of Justice, as part of its effort to build an international research agenda that will help the United States better understand potential threats from transnational crime, supported this project to— ■ Determine high priority areas for research on Asian transnational organized crime. ■ Assess the impact of Asian transnational organized crime on the United States. ■ Identify relevant data and information sources in Asia. ■ Identify potential collaborative research partners and institutions in Asia. This report focuses on the first two project goals.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2007. 40p.

By Virginia Comolli and Natasha Rose

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is Beijing’s flagship programme for expanding its international trade opportunities and promoting infrastructure development. The New Silk Road, as it is often referred to, now encompasses 138 countries, and its unprecedented reach attracts the attention of policymakers and businesses worldwide – and criminals alike. BRI-related projects bring (or will do so once completed) investments, services, employment opportunities and prosperity to countries across Asia, Africa and beyond. However, like all development projects, they are also likely to have unintended consequences – including corruption, criminal exploitation and infiltration. Specifically, increases in licit trade prompted by the building or expansion of road and railway networks, ports and special economic zones provide openings for illicit trade, which ever-entrepreneurial criminal networks are quick to exploit. Indeed, the main pathways and means of illicit trade are usually also the main pathways of licit trade. Failing to acknowledge that development and trade create vulnerabilities in contexts where governance and regulatory capacity is weak, crime levels are high and illicit markets are well established opens up the risk of systematic criminal exploitation of the BRI, either through boosting existing illicit routes or facilitating the emergence of new ones. In other words, these risks call for the need to ‘crimeproof’ development initiatives. The regions at the core of this study – South East Asia and central and East Africa – present a number of vulnerabilities pertaining to the quality of governance, the socioeconomic landscape, the security sphere and the environment. As such, they are already the target of criminal enterprises and are home to some of the largest narcotics, human trafficking and illicit environmental markets in the world. From the perspective of criminal actors, increased connectivity brought about by the BRI equates to easier access to source regions and consumer markets. Larger trade volumes also provide more opportunities to conceal illicit goods among cargoes and to avoid detection at borders, ports and airports. Evidence suggests that the maritime sector in these regions is particularly susceptible to criminal activities as a result of BRI-linked ports and route expansions. Yet the BRI’s reach is much further still, with supply chains extending all the way into Europe and BRI-related projects reaching Latin America and the Caribbean, which may form the focus of a future study.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 75p.

By Bruce A. Jacobs and Richard Wright

Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal Underworld is the first systematic exploration of the phenomenon of modern-day retaliation to be written from the perspective of currently active criminals who have experienced it firsthand – as offenders, victims, or both. Retaliation lies at the heart of much of the violence that plagues inner-city neighborhoods across the United States. Street criminals, who live in a dangerous world, realistically cannot rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from attacks by fellow lawbreakers. They are on their own when it comes to dealing with crimes perpetrated against them, and they often use retaliation as a mechanism for deterring and responding to victimization. Against this background, Bruce Jacobs and Richard Wright draw extensively on their candid interviews with active street criminals to shine a penetrating spotlight on the structure, process, and forms of retaliation in the real-world setting of urban America – a way of life that up to now has been poorly understood.

Cambridge, UK: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 154p.

By Thomas Grisaffi

Bolivia is a drug production and trafficking center and yet it exhibits far less violence than other countries that form part of cocaine’s commodity chain across Latin America. With reference to a case study from the Chapare, a coca-growing and drug processing zone in central Bolivia, this article considers why this is the case. Building from the literature on embedded economies and the ‘subsistence ethic’ of peasant communities, it shows how the drug trade is part of a local moral order that prioritizes kinship, reciprocal relations and community well-being and in doing so restricts the possibilities for violence. In addition, the agricultural unions act as a parallel form of governance, providing a framework for enforcing illicit contracts and the peaceful resolution of disputes. It is argued that illicit crop and drug production can be understood as a form of autonomous grassroots development. This article draws on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2005 and 2019.

Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) annual congress (virtual congress). 28th May 2021. 23p.

By Lindsey Sank Davis

Despite significant progress towards equal protection under the law for women, LGBT individuals, and people of color in the United States, hate crime remains a pervasive problem, and rates appear to have increased in recent years. Bias-motivated homicide – arguably the most serious form of hate crime – is statistically rare but may have far-reaching consequences for marginalized communities. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey have suggested that, on average, fewer than 10 bias-motivated homicides occur in the United States per year; however, data from open sources indicate that the rate of bias-motivated homicide is much higher when utilizing different criteria. In addition to this lack of clarity about prevalence, the dynamics of bias-motivated homicide remain understudied. The present study explores a non-random U.S. sample of 58 closed, adjudicated case files provided by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit for research purposes. The utility of the leading hate crime typology by McDevitt, Levin, and Bennett (2002) is examined by applying the typology to this sample of bias-motivated homicides, and interrater reliability of the typology is considered. To address weaknesses in the typology, this study explores observable expressive and instrumental crime scene behaviors and their relationship to victim identity group membership, provocation, and victim-offender relationship. Results provide preliminary support for a biasmotivated homicide typology based on victim identity and victim-offender interaction preceding the offense. Implications for prevention, offender rehabilitation, and law enforcement are discussed.

New York: City University of New York, 2018. 172p.

Edited by Gorazd Meško, Eszter Sárik, Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac

This timely and comprehensive collection of discussions on victimology, victims of crime and victim protection policies in the Balkans and beyond engages readers with the current state of the art of regional victimology in the Balkans and Central Europe. Original contributions from as many as ten countries of the region analyse the development of victimology, victim protection policies and practices, as well as major areas of victimological research. The main idea of the book at hand is to provide an insight into the complex nature of victimisation in contemporary societies and a deeper understanding of the nature of, and responses to, victimisation in the context of the criminal justice system and civil society. Chapters about the recent developments of victimology in Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey reflect on cultural victimology and contextualisation of victimology and victimological thought from a broader societal perspective. More importantly, the chapters thus present, for the first time, a comparative and contextual account of regional contributions to present-day victimology. This publication is a milestone of victimological research calling for a follow-up and more comparative victimological studies in the future, improvement of practice in victim protection and more feasible victim protection policies.

Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2020. 596p.

Edited by Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac Hans-Jörg Albrecht Michael Kilchling

For the first time, this volume brings together experts in the fields of criminology, criminal law and criminal justice from across the Balkans, to discuss the state of the art of criminology and current crime trends in a region that has thus far largely been neglected by European criminological research. The first chapter analytically describes and defines the Balkan region, not only as a unique historical region, but also as a religious and legal territory, as well as a region of migration and violence and a criminological region sui generis. These facts are used to explore and promote the likely benefits of a coherent regional criminological research approach – with the long-term goal of creating a sustainable ›crimiological landscape‹. Contributions from all members of the Balkan Criminology Network provide an in-depth overview of facts and background information about criminological education and research and data about crime, general crime trends, and current crime and criminal justice challenges. The final chapter presents selected research projects from the actual research agenda of the Max Planck Partner Group for Balkan Criminology (MPPG). This selection makes the book an essential reader for anyone interested in the current criminological setting of the Balkans and an excellent starting point for regional or country specific crime research.

Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2014. 554p.

Soraya Giaccardi, Shawn Van Valkenburgh, Erica L. Rosenthal, Erica Watson-Currie.

On average, 110 people are killed by guns every day in the United States, with Black Americans disproportionately impacted. Young Black men are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than young white men, and between 2019 and 2020, deaths by guns increased by 39.5% among Black people. In 2021, for the first time, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared gun violence a “serious public threat.”

Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens, increasing by 29% from 2019 to 2020 alone. School shootings receive disproportionate media and policy attention and are a major source of fear, but 85% of child victims of gun homicide die in their homes, and over 80% of child gun suicides involve a gun owned by a family member. In addition, myths persist, such as the belief that gun violence is primarily caused by mental illness, or that a civilian “good guy” can intervene in an active shooting and save lives if they are allowed to carry a loaded gun.

New York: Everytown for Gun Safety, 2022.

By Violence Policy Center

This annual study examines black homicide victimization at the state level utilizing unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The study ranks the states by their rates of black homicide victimization and offers additional information for the 10 states with the highest black homicide victimization rates.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2022. 18p.

By Jerome Hall

From the introduction: “Theories of social science, especially those concerning methodology, are often presented very abstractly and in technical vocabularies which seem remote from the actual problems of research. This does not imply that theory should be abandoned or subordinated to practical guidance on research. What is involved is precisely the question of cogent, critical, realistic social theory. Under the circumstances, it occurred to me that a report and discussion of methods and theories employed in this research on theft might be of Interest. The general approach to the problems studied was simply one of curiosity about many phases of law, an attitude conditioned by strong intellectual currents in the social sciences.

New York. Bobbs-Merrill. (1992) 1995. 409p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Jonathan Beller

The Message is Murder analyses the violence bound up in the everyday functions of digital media. At its core is the concept of 'computational capital' - the idea that capitalism itself is a computer, turning qualities into quantities, and that the rise of digital culture and technologies under capitalism should be seen as an extension of capitalism's bloody logic. Engaging with Borges, Turing, Claude Shannon, Hitchcock and Marx, this book tracks computational capital to reveal the lineages of capitalised power as it has restructured representation, consciousness and survival in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Ultimately The Message is Murder makes the case for recognising media communications across all platforms - books, films, videos, photographs and even language itself - as technologies of political economy, entangled with the social contexts of a capitalism that is inherently racial, gendered and genocidal.

London: Pluto Press, 2018. 225p.

By Insecurity Insight

• Gang-related violence has continued to increase due to the worsening security situation and the growing power of the gangs. • On New Year’s Day, Prime Minister Ariel Henry fled a mass he was attending to celebrate Haiti’s Independence Day before he could give his planned speech. • Gang leaders have continued to exert their power over the territories they control, defying the rule of law and committing more acts of violence and extortion. The leader of a gang operating in Gonaïves threatened to kill the judge in charge of an investigation case that involves several gang leaders. The gang leader warned in an audio message that he had killed the judge’s cousin and another man who were discovered to be informants for the police. • There have been numerous other kidnaps for ransom and killings, including the murder of two Haitian journalists who were shot and then burned alive just outside Port-au-Prince. These are VERY LIKELY to increase further in the coming months given the grim security situation and political power vacuum. • Six political blocs, as well as academics and Haitian NGOs, met at the Haiti Unity Summit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana from 13 – 19 January. • Haiti’s Senate sat for the first time in a year on 10 January. • Despite both the Summit and the Senate meeting, concern is building on the ability to develop governance structures.

Switzerland: Insecurity Insight, 2022. 11p.

By Michelle Young

A new diagnosis of gang activity in Belize City, sponsored by the government of Belize and undertaken with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank, reveals issues of significant concern not only for Belize, but also for the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole. Gang violence has dramatically increased with increased gang access to guns; the risk factors for gang involvement show broader and deeper risk exposure, expanding the pool of youth vulnerable to gang recruitment; and these developments have exposed the weaknesses of government responses to the gang problem, highlighting the need for a sustained and coordinated response across agencies. The assessment explores three years of violent crime incident reports; local demographic data; interviews with current and former gang members; interviews with key leaders and professionals who regularly interact with gang members; surveys of youth, community residents, and community leaders; surveys and focus groups with teachers, youth-serving professionals, and parents; and school performance data. It concludes with broad recommendations for future strategies and activities to reduce gang-related violence in Belize City.

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2019. 75p.

By The Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic

Over the course of President Jovenel Moïse’s presidency, Haitian civil society has raised alarm that armed gangs are carrying out heinous, state-sanctioned attacks against civilians in impoverished neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. The scale, pattern, and context of the attacks indicate that they may amount to crimes against humanity. The attacks have taken place in the context of an escalating political crisis. President Moïse’s rule has become increasingly authoritarian and has turned to repression to quell dissent. Since 2018, massive public protests calling for government accountability and Moïse’s resignation have periodically shut down the country. The government has responded to the protests with aggressive measures, including criminalizing common non-violent protest tactics and increasing illegal surveillance of opponents. Targeted assassinations and threats against government critics have been carried out with impunity. During the four years of Moïse’s presidency, human rights observers have documented at least ten brutal attacks in impoverished parts of the capital where opposition against his administration runs strong. Three attacks—in La Saline, Bel-Air, and Cité Soleil—are particularly well-documented and severe. These three attacks offer insights into the means and methods used to carry out the assaults, and the ways in which state actors have supported the orchestration and execution of the attacks. When viewed together, they reveal a pattern of state-sanctioned violence, human rights abuses, and refusal to hold perpetrators accountable that likely amounts to crimes against humanity.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic, 2021. 57p.

By The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

1. In early July 2022, Rose1 , 25 years old, was one of at least 52 women and girls who were collectively raped by armed elements during a week of intense violence opposing two rival gang coalitions in Cité Soleil. In the afternoon of 7 July 2022, Rose, a mother of four and five-months pregnant, was severely beaten and raped, in the presence of her children, by three heavily armed masked men. The latter had forced their way into her home during an attack launched against the residents of Brooklyn, in Cité Soleil. Earlier that day, Rose’s husband had been shot dead by members of the same gang. Before leaving, the armed individuals set her house ablaze, forcing Rose and her children to sleep out in the open in a public space for many nights. The story of Rose, like that of many other women, illustrates the ordeal of victims of sexual violence who are targeted by armed gangs. This report, jointly published by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), shows how armed gangs have used rape, including collective rapes, and other forms of sexual violence to instill fear, punish, subjugate, and inflict pain on local populations with the ultimate goal of expanding their areas of influence, throughout the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. As of August 2022, large swathes of the capital, accounting for at least 1.5 million people, were reportedly under the control or the influence of gang elements.

• More.....

  Gangs are able to commit acts of sexual violence and other human rights abuses mainly because of widespread impunity and ease of access to high caliber weapons and ammunitions trafficked from abroad. Women, girls and boys of all ages, as well as to a lesser extent men, have been victims of ruthless sexual crimes. Children as young as 10 and elderly women were subjected to collective rapes for hours in front of their parents or children by more than half a dozen armed elements during attacks against their neighborhoods. Viewed as enemies for their real or perceived support to rival gangs, or for the simple fact of living in the same areas as those rival gangs, some of these victims were mutilated and executed after being raped. Gangs have also resorted to sexual violence as a weapon to disrupt the social fabric by targeting women and girls crossing “frontlines” or moving across neighborhoods on foot or in public transport to carry out their daily livelihood activities, such as going to work, to marketplaces or to schools.

United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2022. 25p.

By Marc-André Lagrange and Thierry Vircoulon

The current rise in insecurity in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is often attributed to urban youth gangs – the Kulunas. Embedded in Kinshasa’s neighbourhood life and partnered with local political parties and law enforcement agencies, these gangs threaten urban security in the city. This paper examines the rise of the Kulunas from a historical and sociological perspective, and analyzes the state’s security responses to address it.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime, 2021. 24p.