By Jerzy  Kochanowsk

This book analyzes the history of the black market in Poland before the 1940s and the development of black-market phenomena in post-war Poland. The author evaluates the interrelation between black-market phenomena and historical and geographical conditions. At first, the black market stabilized the system by making it more flexible and creating a margin of freedom, albeit in the short term. In the long run, the informal economic activities of the people ran counter to and undermined the official ideology of the state. The author concludes that in post-war Poland, owing to a singular coincidence of historical, political, economic and social factors, the second economy had its own unique character and an endemic presence that loomed large in the Soviet Bloc.

Bern: Peter Lang, 2017. 436p.

By Hannah R. Johnson

The ritual murder accusation is one of a series of myths that fall under the label blood libel, and describes the medieval legend that Jews require Christian blood for obscure religious purposes and are capable of committing murder to obtain it. This malicious myth continues to have an explosive afterlife in the public sphere, where Sarah Palin's 2011 gaffe is only the latest reminder of its power to excite controversy. Blood Libel is the first book-length study to analyze the recent historiography of the ritual murder accusation and to consider these debates in the context of intellectual and cultural history as well as methodology. Hannah R. Johnson articulates how ethics shapes methodological decisions in the study of the accusation and how questions about methodology, in turn, pose ethical problems of interpretation and understanding.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. 250p

By Grace S. Liu, et al.

Problem/Condition: In 2020, approximately 71,000 persons died of violence-related injuries in the United States. This report summarizes data from CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) on violent deaths that occurred in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico in 2020. Results are reported by sex, age group, race and ethnicity, method of injury, type of location where the injury occurred, circumstances of injury, and other selected characteristics.

Period Covered: 2020.

Description of System: NVDRS collects data regarding violent deaths obtained from death certificates, coroner and medical examiner records, and law enforcement reports. This report includes data collected for violent deaths that occurred in 2020. Data were collected from 48 states (all states with exception of Florida and Hawaii), the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Forty-six states had statewide data, two additional states had data from counties representing a subset of their population (35 California counties, representing 71% of its population, and four Texas counties, representing 39% of its population), and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had jurisdiction-wide data. NVDRS collates information for each violent death and links deaths that are related (e.g., multiple homicides, homicide followed by suicide, or multiple suicides) into a single incident.

• More...

  Results: For 2020, NVDRS collected information on 64,388 fatal incidents involving 66,017 deaths that occurred in 48 states (46 states collecting statewide data, 35 California counties, and four Texas counties), and the District of Columbia. In addition, information was collected for 729 fatal incidents involving 790 deaths in Puerto Rico. Data for Puerto Rico were analyzed separately. Of the 66,017 deaths, the majority (58.4%) were suicides, followed by homicides (31.3%), deaths of undetermined intent (8.2%), legal intervention deaths (1.3%) (i.e., deaths caused by law enforcement and other persons with legal authority to use deadly force acting in the line of duty, excluding legal executions), and unintentional firearm deaths (<1.0%). The term “legal intervention” is a classification incorporated into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, and does not denote the lawfulness or legality of the circumstances surrounding a death caused by law enforcement.

  Demographic patterns and circumstances varied by manner of death. The suicide rate was higher for males than for females. Across all age groups, the suicide rate was highest among adults aged ≥85 years. In addition, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons had the highest suicide rates among all racial and ethnic groups. Among both males and females, the most common method of injury for suicide was a firearm. Among all suicide victims, when circumstances were known, suicide was most often preceded by a mental health, intimate partner, or physical health problem or by a recent or impending crisis during the previous or upcoming 2 weeks. The homicide rate was higher for males than for females. Among all homicide victims, the homicide rate was highest among persons aged 20–24 years compared with other age groups. Non-Hispanic Black (Black) males experienced the highest homicide rate of any racial or ethnic group. Among all homicide victims, the most common method of injury was a firearm. Description text goes here

Washington DC. National Violent Death Reporting System, 2020.

By Marcela Bittar Araujo Lima andMauricio Yonamine

Counterfeiting of medicines, also known as “falsification” or “adulteration”, is the process in which the identity, origin, or history of genuine medicines are intentionally modified. Currently, counterfeit medicines are a global crisis that affects and is mostly caused by developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These countries lack strict law enforcement against this practice and have low-income populations with medicinal needs. Lately, the crisis has escalated, impacting developed countries as well, e.g., the US and the EU, mainly via the Internet. Despite this extension, some current laws aim to control and minimize the crisis’ magnitude. Falsification of medicines maintains an illegitimate supply chain that is connected to the legitimate one, both of which are extremely complex, making such falsification difficult to control. Furthermore, political and economic causes are related to the crisis’ hasty growth, causing serious consequences for individuals and public health, as well as for the economy of different countries. Recently, organizations, technologies and initiatives have been created to overcome the situation. Nevertheless, the development of more effective measures that could aggregate all the existing strategies into a large functioning network could help prevent the acquisition of counterfeit medicines and create awareness among the general population.

  Brazilian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, vol. 59, 2023.

By TRAFFIC

  This highly lucrative illicit business is managed by organised criminal groups through a variety of payment mechanisms. These mechanisms, including cash transactions and bulk cash smuggling, trade-based money-laundering, international bank transfers through legal businesses and nominee bank account holders, are key to advancing the objectives of criminal organisations. Organised criminal groups3 engage in corruption to accomplish their aims by bribing public officials to obtain information on the movement of animals or patrols, to acquire illegitimate licences or permits to give illegal wildlife products the veneer of legitimacy and to allow illegal specimens to pass through checkpoints or avoid seizure. Further, offenders may attempt to pay law enforcement officials to disrupt or close criminal investigations to circumvent any consequences associated with their illegal activities. Currently, there is a noticeable lack of financial investigations related to wildlife and forest crime cases. As such, the information about how criminals extract the profits from wildlife and forest crimes, and the identities of the main financial beneficiaries of those crimes, remains limited. The result of this is that low-level criminals, such as poachers, are caught and prosecuted, leaving the more senior members of criminal groups and actual beneficiaries of these crimes free to continue their illicit activities. A greater understanding of the financial aspects will allow for more effective prosecutions that target those that use corruption to facilitate wildlife and forest crime, and thereby disrupt organised criminal groups.

This Case Digest was created to fill this information gap by providing data on actual cases from Africa, Asia and Latin America and thereby generate more knowledge of financial flows associated with the illegal wildlife trade and what payment mechanisms are used by those perpetrating the crime .  

Cambridge, UK: TRAFFIC International, 2020. 120p.

By  Ruggero Scaturro

This report applies the ‘hotspots’ approach that has been used by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s (GI-TOC) Observatory of Illicit Economies in South Eastern Europe to analyze organized crime in the Western Balkans as well as the activities of criminal groups from the region in other parts of the world, as exposed in the earlier ‘Transnational tentacles’ report.

As in the context of the risk assessment conducted on Western Balkan ports last year, this approach examines places that are associated with organized crime (hotspots), rather than people or markets. The objective is to focus on the factors that make these locations vulnerable or attractive to organized crime; assess the internal dynamics and players; plot the locations on a map and connect the dots between them to get a clearer overview of the geography of crime in the region.

When researching hotspots of criminal activity in the Western Balkans and the activities of Balkan criminal groups abroad, it became evident that there were a growing number of police and customs operations in major international airports, particularly in Tirana (Albania), Skopje (North Macedonia) and Belgrade (Serbia). These operations merited a closer look, so it was decided that an organized crime-based security threat assessment of airports in the Western Balkans should be undertaken. Although illicit activities are also being conducted using private jets that land at minor airports and airstrips, it was beyond the scope of this study to analyze every aviation site in the Western Balkans. Rather, the focus is limited to two major airports, which are presented as case studies: Belgrade and Skopje’s international airports. These seem to be the hubs for illicit activities related to human trafficking, smuggling of migrants and goods, as well as main entry points for shipments of drugs and precursors.

Using a similar model to the research conducted for the report ‘Portholes: Exploring the maritime Balkan routes’, we developed a methodology for carrying out a risk assessment, together with airport security experts. Among the issues covered by this methodology are airport ownership; trade and passenger volumes; security measures; major illicit markets; criminal actors involved; law enforcement operations; and enabling factors of illicit activity, such as infrastructure, governance and corruption. These assessments were done at the airports of Belgrade and Skopje between November 2022 and January 2023, and involved semi-structured interviews with more than 20 airport experts, including security providers (i.e. representatives of customs, border police, state police, prosecutors’ offices and private security companies), representatives of logistics companies operating in the Western Balkans, international experts on aviation security, academics, and journalists reporting on illicit trade through airports. The findings, outlined in the two case studies, are set out in the report.

The report also provides an analytical overview of security at airports, factors of vulnerability in aviation departing from and arriving in the Western Balkans, and how these vulnerabilities are exploited for criminal purposes. In addition, the report considers how airports are part of a wider regional infrastructure that feeds into a network of trade and travel corridors, and particularly how they serve as nodes connecting Western Europe and Asia. Recommendations to help mitigate the risk of illicit flows through these aviation hotspots are given in the final section of the report.

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

By S. Elsayed

Cryptocurrency is becoming an increasingly popular tool for organised crime groups (OCGs) to conduct illicit activities. OCGs can exploit the inherent pseudonymity and decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies to conduct money laundering and other crimes related to corruption. Criminals can use cryptocurrencies instead of the formal banking system to move large sums of money which entails a potentially lower risk of being detected by law enforcement or the traditional financial institutions which are required to submit suspicious transaction reports. The development sector can play an important role in mitigating the risks associated with the criminal use of cryptocurrency. Relevant actions include coordinating the development and implementation of regulatory and legislative frameworks, educating the public about the risks of cryptocurrency use and strengthening law enforcement agencies’ capacity to dismantle criminal networks.

 Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Issue 2023:8)

By S. Lemaitre and A. Visser

‘Enablers’ are those people and professions who make illicit financial flows possible. They include lawyers, accountants, bankers, real estate agents and others – and the firms they represent. Whether they know it or not, they play an essential role in helping kleptocrats to move, launder and spend the proceeds of their illicit wealth, while also helping them to ‘whitewash’ their reputation. Many enablers are based in countries that are significant providers of official development assistance. We therefore make some important recommendations to help address the ‘enablers’ problem’.

Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Issue 2023:3)

European Parliament

In July 2021, the European Commission tabled a proposal to establish a new EU authority to counter money laundering and the financing of terrorism (AMLA). This was part of a legislative package aimed at implementing the 2020 action plan for a comprehensive Union policy on preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The AMLA would be the centre of an integrated system composed of the authority itself and the national authorities with an AML/CFT supervisory mandate. It would also support EU financial intelligence units (FIUs) and establish a cooperation mechanism among them. The Council achieved a partial political agreement on the proposal on 29 June 2022. In the European Parliament, the file was referred to the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). The co-rapporteurs issued their joint report in May 2022. The joint committee report was voted on 28 March 2023 and the mandate to enter trilogues was granted by the plenary on 17 April 2023. Third edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure. The first edition was written by Carla Stamegna.

Brussels: European Parliament, 2020. 10p.

By Saša Đorđević

  Organized crime and corruption in the Western Balkans have been on the rise since the 1990s, following the war in former Yugoslavia in 1995 and the political-economic crisis triggered by the collapse of pyramid schemes in Albania in 1997. Accordingly, popular, journalistic and academic research on organized crime in these states – namely, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – has also increased. In 1996, for example, the head of Belgrade’s criminal police, Marko Nicović, published the book Droga: Carstvo zla (Drugs: Evil Empire) about the history of organized drug trade and the current fight to curtail it. In 2001, the Serbian Interior Ministry mapped and systematically identified 118 organized criminal groups for the first time in the White Book.  In 2002, journalist Jelena Bjelica wrote a study on human trafficking in Europe and the Balkans. In 2005, journalist Miloš Vasić published an in-depth profile of the Zemun Clan, which he described as one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Balkans during their heyday between 1999 and 2003. One of the first regional projects on the impact of organized crime on peace-building in the region was launched in 2006. Organized crime in the region also sparked interest among international scholars, such as Misha Glenny, who, in 2018, published McMafia, about the global rise in organized crime since the 1980s. Despite the surge in research on organized crime in the Western Balkans, the findings are still insufficient and lacking in certain respects. These works reflect three main trends of illicit economies in the Western Balkans. First, the geography of organized crime has advanced from heroin smuggling through the Balkan route to cocaine trafficking from Latin America to Western Europe, and to the region being a source of particular illicit goods such as weapons and cannabis.6 Second, the politics of illicit economies in the region has evolved from being an ecosystem of political protection for crime facilitators to organized corruption that enriches and shields those with power. Third, following the end of communism and regional wars, the lack of institutional capacity to provide tangible societal improvements resulted in only partial reforms in criminal justice systems across the region. This is despite the 1999 reforms in justice and home affairs fostered by the EU through the Stabilization and Association Process. The objective of this study prepared by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) is to systematically and strategically identify gaps in the current understanding of organized crime in the Western Balkans, and to suggest future areas of work that could help close these gaps and better understand illicit practices. This gap analysis maps existing knowledge, identifies  trends and emerging issues, and reveals the under-researched aspects of illicit economies in the region. With this approach, this study aims to better understand areas of uncertainty and initiate new studies more quickly. Identifying blind spots in the existing literature is a necessary step for creating a new research agenda, establishing strategic and funding priorities and designing research projects that can build the knowledge base, enhance analysis and contribute to evidence-based policymaking.10 Ultimately, this research agenda should aid in the prevention and disruption of organized crime both in the Western Balkans or perpetrated by criminals from the region. After first describing the methodology and data collection techniques of the gap analysis, the paper explains the scale, scope and impact of organized crime and corruption research in the Western Balkans. It then examines the main thematic focus of research on organized crime in the region – namely, criminal markets, criminal actors, and the resilience of state and non-state actors to organized crime and corruption. The third part lays out recommendations and further steps to better understand and increase knowledge of the illicit economies in the Western Balkans.   

 Geneva:  The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 38p. 

By Gabriel Feltran,  Cecília Lero, Marcelli Cipriani, Janaina Maldonado, Fernando de Jesus Rodrigues, Luiz Eduardo Lopes Silva e Nido Farias

The paper proposes an explanation for the variations in homicide rates in Brazil in the past two decades. Based on the comparison of ethnographic experiences lived in the criminal universe of four capital cities (São Paulo, Porto Alegre, São Luís and Maceió), we propose two analytical strategies: 1) the breakdown of quantitative homicide rate data by victim profile, and 2) the construction of historical synopses of conflicts between factions at the local level. We demonstrate how homicide rates, in specific socio-demographic profiles, oscillate based on changes in conflicts between factions at the local level conflicts, and influence variations in the aggregate rates   

  Dilemas, Rev. Estud. Conflito Controle Soc. – Rio de Janeiro – Edição Especial no 4 – 2022 – pp. 349-386  

By Stephanie G. Stahlberg

Brazilian prison gangs have spilled out to the outside world and become criminal enterprises. The expansion of São Paulo’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Rio de Janeiro’s Comando Vermelho into all regions and most states in Brazil signifies a major security concern for the country. A third player, Família do Norte (FDN), poses a challenge to the other organized criminal groups (OCGs), especially in the North region, where the FDN fights to retain control of the lucrative drug trading route through the Amazon. Although organized crime is believed to play a significant role in the violence level in Brazil, no study has been able to measure their presence and activity levels beyond one city or state. This dissertation develops a novel methodology for tracking criminal groups, by using the number of Google searches about each OCG in a given state and year. This method creates a proxy for the OCGs' presence and activity level, which is also used to generate a competition index. The analysis shows that OCG presence by itself does not explain homicide rates well; in fact, some states with high levels of OCG activity have relatively low homicide rates. However, in combination with a highly competitive scenario, the strong presence of these groups can translate into high levels of violence. When all three OCGs are present, the homicide rate is on average five points higher than when there are fewer OCGs present. In places where there is dominance of a single OCG, violence levels are lower. Findings from the data analysis and expert interviews reveal that the homicide reduction occurs because of higher levels of criminal market monopolization and criminal governance. Powerful OCGs replace the state and regulate violence in these communities, and are strong and threatening enough to prevent the state from challenging them directly. This study shows that a decrease in the homicide rate in the presence of OCGs should not be seen as a clear success, but rather as a warning sign that criminality may be more united and stronger.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2021. 176p.

By  Vanda Felbab-Brown

  This paper explores the trends, characteristics, and changes in the Mexican criminal market, in response to internal changes, government policies, and external factors. It explores the nature of violence and criminality, the behavior of criminal groups, and the effects of government responses. • Over the past two decades, criminal violence in Mexico has become highly intense, diversified, and popularized, while the deterrence capacity of Mexican law enforcement remains critically low. The outcome is an ever more complex, multipolar, and out-of-control criminal market that generates deleterious effects on Mexican society and makes it highly challenging for the Mexican state to respond effectively. • Successive Mexican administrations have failed to sustainably reduce homicides and other violent crimes. Critically, the Mexican government has failed to rebalance power in the triangular relationship between the state, criminal groups, and society, while the Mexican population has soured on the anti-cartel project. • Since 2000, Mexico has experienced extraordinarily high drug- and crime-related violence, with the murder rate in 2017 and again in 2018 breaking previous records. • The fragmentation of Mexican criminal groups is both a purposeful and inadvertent effect of high-value targeting, which is a problematic strategy because criminal groups can replace fallen leaders more easily than insurgent or terrorist groups. The policy also disrupts leadership succession, giving rise to intense internal competition and increasingly younger leaders who lack leadership skills and feel the need to prove themselves through violence. • Focusing on the middle layer of criminal groups prevents such an easy and violent regeneration of the leadership. But the Mexican government remains   deeply challenged in middle-layer targeting due to a lack of tactical and strategic intelligence arising from corruption among Mexican law enforcement and political pressures that makes it difficult to invest the necessary time to conduct thorough investigations. • In the absence of more effective state presence and rule of law, the fragmentation of Mexican criminal groups turned a multipolar criminal market of 2006 into an ever more complex multipolar criminal market. Criminal groups lack clarity about the balance of power among them, tempting them to take over one another’s territory and engage in internecine warfare. • The Mexican crime market’s proclivity toward violence is exacerbated by the government’s inability to weed out the most violent criminal groups and send a strong message that they will be prioritized in targeting......

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2019. 29p.

By L. Musing

This report investigates the domestic legislation, and policies regarding the keeping and captive breeding of tigers and disposal of their parts in the EU, and the enforcement of these regulations. Six target countries were selected as a focus for this study: Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, based on preliminary trade data analysis and suspected or known links to the captive tiger population and tiger trade nexus. Between February and July 2020, interviews and consultations were conducted through written questionnaires and video-calls with stakeholders, including the CITES Management and/or Enforcement Authorities of the six target countries, European and national zoo associations, and relevant NGOs. CITES trade data for the period 2013 through 2017 were used to analyse reported legal trade patterns involving tigers to and from the EU, and data for the same time period from two seizures databases: EU-TWIX and TRAFFIC’s Wildlife Trade Information System (WiTIS), were used to assess the EU’s involvement in the illegal trade of tigers and their parts and derivatives.

Cambridge, UK: TRAFFIC, and World Wildlife Fund, 2020. 53p.

By E.Y. Sy and K. Krishnassamy 

Over 90 percent of the Philippine Pangolins documented to have been seized from illegal trade over the last two decades have been seized in the last two years of the period, says a new TRAFFIC study. The estimated equivalent of 740 Critically Endangered Philippine Pangolins were seized from illegal trade in the country between 2000 and 2017. However, between 2018 and 2019, an estimated 6,894 pangolins were seized suggesting a stunning nine-fold increase in pangolins seized between the two periods

TRAFFIC, Southeast Asia Regional Office, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.2020. 28p.

By GlobeScan

  The research questions and results reported herein are provided on a confidential basis to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). WWF is free to use the findings in whatever manner it chooses, including releasing them to the public or media, after consultation with GlobeScan on the use and dissemination of the data. GlobeScan Incorporated subscribes to the standards of the World Association of Opinion and Marketing Research Professionals (ESOMAR). ESOMAR sets minimum disclosure standards for studies that are released to the public or the media. The purpose is to maintain the integrity of market research by avoiding misleading interpretations. If you are considering the dissemination of the findings, please consult with us regarding the form and content of publication. ESOMAR standards require us to correct any misinterpretation.  

World Wildlife Fund, 2020. 83p.

By Hai Thank Luong

As one of the earliest countries in the Southeast Asia region, Vietnam joined the CITES in 1994. However, they have faced several challenges and practical barriers to preventing and combating illegal wildlife trade (IWT) after 35 years. This first study systematically reviews 29 English journal articles between 1994 and 2020 to examine and assess the main trends and patterns of the IWT’s concerns in Vietnam. Findings show (1) slow progress of empirical studies, (2) unbalanced authorship between Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese conducting their projects, (3) weighting of wildlife demand consumptions in Vietnamese communities rather than investigating supply networks with high-profile traffickers, (4) lacking research in green and conservation criminology to assess the inside of the IWT, and (5) need to focus on potential harms of zoonotic transmission between a wild animal and human beings. The article also provides current limitations before proposing further research to fill these future gaps.

Laws 11: 64. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws 11040064 

By Education for Nature

Vietnam's Revised d Penal Code came into effect in January 2018. The revised law is much tougher on wildlife crime and, in general, is sufficiently effective in deterring crime if applied universally. By some accounts, the revised Criminal Code is the “ideal law” as it closes loopholes, increases punishment for serious offenses, and incorporates a foundation on which the criminal justice system can effectively deter wildlife crime. According to the new Penal Code, activities including hunting, catching, killing, rearing, caging, transporting, and/or trading of endangered, precious, and rare species or their parts and derivatives shall be deemed criminal offenses, depending on the number of animals involved. The revised Penal Code has also added “possession” as a criminal offense, closing a critical loophole that previously allowed criminals to escape with mere fines for keeping frozen tigers, rhino horn, and other endangered species and their products.   

  Species fully protected under the new Penal Code include endangered species listed under Decree 160 [2013] and its subsequently updated list of protected species under Decree 64 [2019], species listed under Group I of Decree 06, and species listed under Appendix I of CITES. The Penal Code also affords greater protection to species that are not listed on the aforementioned Decree 64, Decree 06, or Appendix I of CITES, permitting authorities to criminally charge offenders if they are engaged in illegal activities involving large quantities of animals. This new aspect of the Penal Code strengthens the hand of law enforcement dealing with criminal networks that smuggle large quantities of animals such as snakes or freshwater turtles that may not be specifically protected under endangered species laws.  

Hanoi: Education for Nature, 2021. 12p.

  By Antônio Sampaio

This report concludes a research project conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), with support of Germany’s GIZ, that examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic challenges accompanying it on criminal governance in cities. The project aims to study how gangs and other non-state armed groups operating in illicit economies have altered their activities in light of the new circumstances in areas of criminal governance, and how governments and civil society have responded. We define criminal governance as instances in which armed criminal groups set and enforce rules, provide security and other basic services – such as water, electricity or internet access – in an urban area, which may be a part or the whole of an informal settlement or a neighbourhood. The project uses a comparative methodology, drawing from semi-structured interviews feeding into five separate case studies. The data is then synthesized in a final report that analyzes and summarizes the main trends. A fuller description of the methodology can be found in the final report.  The case studies in this project are Tumaco (Colombia), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), San Salvador (El Salvador), Nairobi (Kenya) and Cape Town (South Africa)  

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2021. 39p.

Tomáš Divia, Indra Oosting, and Gerard Wolters

In this study, we investigated the relation between the different stages of women trafficking (i.e. recruitment, entrance, accommodation, labor, and finance) and the structure of five criminal networks involved in women trafficking in the Netherlands (Ns ranging from 6 to 15). On the one hand, it could be argued that for efficiency and avoidance of being detected by law enforcement agencies, the network structure might align with the different stages, resulting in a cell-structured network with collaboration between actors within rather than across stages. On the other hand, criminal actors might prefer to collaborate and rely on a few others, whom they trust in order to circumvent the lack of formal opportunities to enforce collaboration and agreements, resulting in a core-periphery network with actors also collaborating across stages. Results indicate that three of the five networks were characterized by a core-periphery structure, whereas the two other networks exhibit a mixture of both a cell-structured and core-periphery network. Furthermore, using an Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM), we found that actors were likely to form ties with each other in the stages of recruitment, accommodation, and exploitation, but not in the stages of transport and finance.

European Journal of CriminologyOnlineFirst, November 28, 2021