By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Odesa is a city of immense importance to Ukraine. Its port is the gateway through which most of Ukraine’s trade with the world is conducted, but it also holds a deeply symbolic place in the country’s heart – the so-called ‘Jewel of the Black Sea.’

It has also long been one of the most criminalized cities in Ukraine, both in terms of illicit flows through its port (including drugs, weapons, and contraband) and the high levels of corruption around the construction industry, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and the customs agency. The city itself was also a stronghold of pro-Russian sentiment, even after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych (who was politically close to Moscow), the conflict in the Donbas, and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. At the same time, the Russian invasion of Ukraine dealt a severe blow to organized crime in Odesa.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime., 2023. 48p.

By Gabriel Feltran, Isabela Vianna Pinho and Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo

Cocaine trafficking through West Africa, following the well-established route from Latin America to the European consumer market, appears to be in a phase of sharp growth. Since 2016, the majority of consignments transiting West Africa begin their journey in Brazil. The Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) – the largest criminal organization in Brazil – is pivotal to understanding Brazil’s newfound importance for cocaine in West Africa.

Cocaine trafficking between Brazil and West Africa stretches back at least to the 1980s, but as cultivation in Latin America continues to increase and consumption in Europe has grown, more and more cocaine is being moved along this path. In 2018, only one West African country – Senegal – was in the top 10 destinations for cocaine seized in Brazilian ports; by 2019, after a bumper year of seizures in Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone had also pushed their way onto the list. Cultivation in Latin America reached record levels in 2021, and in the following year an unprece-dented 24 tonnes were seized across West Africa.

In this report, we focus on the flow of cocaine between Brazil and West Africa, which largely supplies the lucrative European consumer market, and in particular on the role of the PCC, which straddles various illicit supply chains.

The research for this report has drawn on various data collection techniques but rests primarily on field observations of the retail trade and transit of illegal goods in South America, West Africa and Europe between 2015 and 2022. These observations, described in detail in the authors’ field notebooks, were supplemented by formal and informal interviews with those involved in the cocaine trade, from the South American borders to the retail trade spaces of Europe, allowing us to trace the journey of cocaine through the different nodes of the value chain.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023 28p.

By Saša Đorđević

Fuel smuggling is the illegal transport, sale or purchase of petroleum products such as crude oil, petrol, diesel and other refined petroleum products. It has been a persistent illicit trade in the Balkans for over three decades.

In 2022, police and customs of the seven Balkan countries seized more than 3 000 tonnes of illegal fuel, with a retail value of €4.3 million – almost four times more than the value of fuel seized in all of 2021. Fuels are goods subject to high excise and customs duties that smugglers try to avoid paying. Alternatively, smugglers seek to profit by evading embargoes on oil imports and exports. From this perspective, the Balkan countries’ public funds lost at least €1.2 million in 2022 as a result of fuel smuggling.

However, relying solely on seizure data to evaluate the illicit fuel market may lead to misleading conclusions because of law enforcement’s inherent challenge in substantiating the unlawful provenance of fuel. This discrepancy becomes more apparent when considering the estimated scale of the issue. In Bulgaria alone, for example, the projected value of illegal fuel in 2019 reached approximately €0.5 billion, resulting in significant budget losses of €250 million.

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Libyan electoral crisis, both of which involved major oil-producing countries, the UN extended measures to combat illicit petroleum exports from Libya in July 2022. The EU also imposed bans on Russian oil in December 2022 and again in February 2023, as part of its response to the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the Balkans became the focus for licit and illicit fuel manoeuvres.This report analyzes the mechanisms of fuel smuggling during times of crisis and instability in the Balkans, considering both internal and external factors that contribute to the overall landscape. It identifies lessons learned from fuel smuggling in the early 1990s and then moves to explain the evolution of this activity with reference to trafficking methods, actors and routes through to 2022. The report also identifies countries in the Balkans at particular risk from fuel smuggling, as well as hotspots that allow illicit trade, particularly on rivers and seas. The report, furthermore, assesses the typical profile of criminal actors active in fuel smuggling. The research is limited to cross-border fuel smuggling operations rather than illegal distribution within a specific country.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 34p.

By James Byrne and Joe Byrne

North Korea relies on the outside world to import fuel.26 With no demonstrated oil reserves and limited domestic refinery capacity, imports of refined petroleum products are vital to the regime’s stability and survival. As in all modern economies, energy—predicated on a constant flow of fuel into the country—underpins North Korea’s domestic and export economy, as well as Pyongyang’s capacity to train and field armed forces and develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The international community’s efforts to cap North Korea’s oil and petroleum products imports in 2017 forced Pyongyang to adapt its fuel-procurement strategy. This report finds that North Korea has been engaging organized criminal networks and participating in a regional fuel smuggling market in violation of international sanctions, and that the nation is demonstrating increasingly sophisticated and previously unseen tactics to evade detection. Even by conservative estimates, Pyongyang appears to have successfully bypassed fuel sanctions and exceeded the cap imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) each year since the introduction of the limit.27 Despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic and by North Korea’s restrictions on port traffic, analysis of highresolution satellite imagery of oil terminals and import facilities suggests North Korea has once again breached the import cap in 2020. Through analysis of AIS data and satellite imagery, the authors found that the proportion of fuel deliveries to North Korean ports by foreign-flagged tankers is significant and has been increasing.28 This phenomenon raises important questions about the entities behind these sanctions violations, and it calls for scrutiny of how smugglers continue to evade detection and identification while transporting fuel within some of the most heavily monitored waters in the world. In this investigation we find the following: North Korea has tapped into an existing fuel smuggling economy in East Asia to procure fuel at volume. Different national-level regulatory and pricing regimes for fuel in the region create arbitrage opportunities that smugglers have long exploited to generate immense profit. These smugglers divert fuel from the licit market to sell to various customers, one of which is North Korea. Taiwan appears to be a key locus in this regional black market for fuel. The country’s preferential fuel policies price refined petroleum products lower than those of its neighbors, creating opportunities for arbitrage and offering smugglers a cheap and readily available source of fuel. Additionally, several of the networks and entities engaged in DPRK–related fuel smuggling operate from or out of addresses or ports in Taiwan. The country’s waters are also being exploited by illicit actors conducting DPRK-related, ship-to-ship (STS) transfers of fuel in a multilayered shuttle system that bisects both “dirty” vessels traveling directly to North Korea and “clean” vessels discreetly supplying those direct-delivery tankers with fuel on the high seas. North Korea’s illicit fuel supply chain has links to organized crime. Several of the key actors in North Korea’s fuel procurement originate from, and maintain connections to, Fujian province, China and, in particular, the city of Shishi. Shishi and the nearby coastal cities of Fujian province have long been a regional smuggling hub for illicit goods, such as cigarettes, wildlife products, drugs, and fuel. These actors appear to constitute a loose criminal federation whose interests and activities intersect to smuggle fuel to North Korea. A key node in this DPRK fuel procurement network appears to be the Winson Group, a major regional oil trader. The Winson Group is headquartered in Singapore and has offices across East Asia; it has links to several shipping and oil trading companies in the region, as well as businesses registered in secrecy jurisdictions, through which it has connections to possible STS transfers of fuel that ultimately end up in North Korea. The founder of the Winson Group also has a documented history of cigarette and fuel smuggling and alleged connections to illicit DPRK-related commercial activities. This report finds that North Korea’s shipping and maritime sanctions evasion tactics are highly adaptive and growing increasingly sophisticated in response to pressure from and enforcement by the international community. While these outcomes indicate the sanctions regime has complicated and increased the cost of illicit business for North Korea, the demonstrated adaptability of the country’s maritime trade networks also underscores, in dramatic fashion, the growing cost of monitoring, detection, and enforcement. This report also highlights the need for authorities to better explore the connections between North Korea, underground economies, and transnational organized crime, and it adds to the existing but underexplored literature of the country’s links to organized criminal networks. Relying on sanctions to block North Korea’s licit avenues of procurement creates a supply-and-demand dynamic between providers of illicit goods and services—often criminal organizations—and Pyongyang. To stay abreast of North Korea’s evolving tactics for evading sanctions, this report recommends that international, government, and civil regulators proactively monitor criminal networks that provide the country with contraband goods and services, while closing regulatory loopholes in the international sanctions regime, rather than reactively investigating instances of sanctions evasion.

Washington, DC: c4ads, 2021. 84p.

By Mohamed Daghar, Willis Okumu and Tadesse Simie Metekia

This study explores links between cattle rustling in East Africa’s Karamoja Cluster and the flow of illicit arms into this ungoverned space.

This study looks at the links between cattle rustling in East Africa’s Karamoja Cluster and the flow of illicit arms into this ungoverned space. It looks at the actors involved in the illicit arms trade, the sources of the weapons, and the need for responses other than civilian disarmament exercises, which so far have been unsuccessful.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 20p.

By Ken Opala

Despite the August 2022 elections proceeding relatively smoothly, there is still a clear nexus between politics and crime in the country.

Election violence remains a major problem in Kenya despite attempts by the state and other actors to tackle it. Ahead of the country’s fifth general election, held on 9 August 2022, state agencies, the media and civil society predicted the re-emergence of gangs and militias keen to influence its outcome. Although the elections went off relatively smoothly there is still a clear nexus between politics and crime.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 24p.

By Olwethu Majola and Darren Brookbanks

This paper uses data and analysis to assess the UNTOC's effectiveness in addressing transnational organised crime on the continent.

The international community prescribed the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) as the treatment to slow the global spread of TOC. However, current diagnoses suggest that this has not been as effective as anticipated. This paper assesses the efficacy of the UNTOC and recommends some changes to the treatment that are likely to yield more successful results.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 32p.

By Gina Bou Serhal, Kristian Alexander and Rahaf Alkhazraji

This issue brief delves into the changing landscape of Italian organized crime, focusing on the ‘Ndrangheta, a potent criminal group originating from Calabria. It explores how the ‘Ndrangheta has diversified its criminal activities, including drug trafficking and environmental crimes, and its alleged connections with international criminal and terrorist organizations. The brief also sheds light on the emergence of the youthful “Baby Mafia,” or Camorra in Naples, known for its decentralized structure and social media presence glamorizing criminal life. It emphasizes Italy’s efforts to combat organized crime and the necessity for a united European approach to address the mafia’s global influence and adaptability across borders.

Stockholm: Institute for Security and Development Policy, 2023. 6p.

By Matthew P. J. Ashby

The COVID-19 pandemic led to substantial changes in the daily activities of millions of Americans, with many businesses and schools closed, public events cancelled and states introducing stay-at-home orders. This article used police-recorded open crime data to understand how the frequency of common types of crime changed in 16 large cities across the United States in the early months of 2020. Seasonal auto-regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) models of crime in previous years were used to forecast the expected frequency of crime in 2020 in the absence of the pandemic. The forecasts from these models were then compared to the actual frequency of crime during the early months of the pandemic. There were no significant changes in the frequency of serious assaults in public or (contrary to the concerns of policy makers) any change to the frequency of serious assaults in residences. In some cities, there were reductions in residential burglary but little change in non-residential burglary. Thefts of motor vehicles decreased in some cities while there were diverging patterns of thefts from motor vehicles. These results are used to make suggestions for future research into the relationships between the coronavirus pandemic and different crimes.

Crime Science 2020 9:6

By Eric Halford, Anthony Dixon, Graham Farrell, Nicolas Malleson and Nick Tilley

Governments around the world restricted movement of people, using social distancing and lockdowns, to help stem the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We examine crime effects for one UK police force area in comparison to 5-year averages. There is variation in the onset of change by crime type, some declining from the WHO ‘global pandemic’ announcement of 11 March, others later. By 1 week after the 23 March lockdown, all recorded crime had declined 41%, with variation: shoplifting (−62%), theft (−52%), domestic abuse (−45%), theft from vehicle (−43%), assault (−36%), burglary dwelling (−25%) and burglary non-dwelling (−25%). We use Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports to calculate the mobility elasticity of crime for four crime types, finding shoplifting and other theft inelastic but responsive to reduced retail sector mobility (MEC=0.84, 0.71 respectively), burglary dwelling elastic to increases in residential area mobility (−1), with assault inelastic but responsive to reduced workplace mobility (0.56). We theorise that crime rate changes were primarily caused by those in mobility, suggesting a mobility theory of crime change in the pandemic. We identify implications for crime theory, policy and future research

Crime Science 2020 9:11

By Manne Gerell, Johan Kardell and Johanna Kindgren

The covid-19 disease has a large impact on life across the globe, and this could potentially include impacts on crime. The present study describes how crime has changed in Sweden during ten weeks after the government started to implement interventions to reduce spread of the disease. Sweden has undertaken smaller interventions than many other countries and is therefore a particularly interesting case to study. The first major interventions in Sweden were implemented in the end of week 11 (March 12th) in the year 2020, and we analyze police reported crimes through week 21 (ending May 24th). Descriptive statistics are provided relative to expected levels with 95% confidence intervals for eight crime types. We found that total crime, assaults, pickpocketing and burglary have decreased significantly, personal robberies and narcotics crime are unchanged. Vandalism possibly increased somewhat but is hard to draw any frm conclusions on. The reductions are fairly small for most crime types, in the 5–20% range, with pickpocketing being the biggest exception noting a 59% drop relative to expected levels.

Crime Science 2020 9:19

By Gian Maria Campedelli, Serena Favarin, Alberto Aziani and Alex R. Piquero

Recent studies exploiting city-level time series have shown that, around the world, several crimes declined after COVID-19 containment policies have been put in place. Using data at the community-level in Chicago, this work aims to advance our understanding on how public interventions affected criminal activities at a finer spatial scale. The analysis relies on a two-step methodology. First, it estimates the community-wise causal impact of social distancing and shelter-in-place policies adopted in Chicago via Structural Bayesian Time-Series across four crime categories (i.e., burglary, assault, narcotics-related offenses, and robbery). Once the models detected the direction, magnitude and significance of the trend changes, Firth’s Logistic Regression is used to investigate the factors associated with the statistically significant crime reduction found in the first step of the analyses. Statistical results first show that changes in crime trends differ across communities and crime types. This suggests that beyond the results of aggregate models lies a complex picture characterized by diverging patterns. Second, regression models provide mixed findings regarding the correlates associated with significant crime reduction: several relations have opposite directions across crimes with population being the only factor that is stably and positively associated with significant crime reduction.

Crime Science 2020 9:21

By Martin A. Andresen and Tarah Hodgkinson

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected social life. In efforts to reduce the spread of the virus, countries around the world implemented social restrictions, including social distancing, working from home, and the shuttering of numerous businesses. These social restrictions have also affected crime rates. In this study, we investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of offending (crimes include property, violence, mischief, and miscellaneous) in Queensland, Australia. In particular, we examine this impact across numerous settings, including rural, regional and urban. We measure these shifts across the restriction period, as well as the staged relaxation of these restrictions. In order to measure the impact of this period we use structural break tests. In general, we find that criminal offences have significantly decreased during the initial lockdown, but as expected, increased once social restrictions were relaxed. These findings were consistent across Queensland’s districts, save for two areas. We discuss how these findings are important for criminal justice and social service practitioners when operating within an extraordinary event.

Crime Science 2020 9:25

By Samuel Langton, Anthony Dixon and Graham Farrell

Governments around the world have enforced strict guidelines on social interaction and mobility to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evidence has begun to emerge which suggests that such dramatic changes in people’s routine activities have yielded similarly dramatic changes in criminal behavior. This study represents the frst ‘look back’ on six months of the nationwide lockdown in England and Wales. Using open police-recorded crime trends, we provide a comparison between expected and observed crime rates for fourteen diferent ofence categories between March and August, 2020. We fnd that most crime types experienced sharp, short-term declines during the frst full month of lockdown. This was followed by a gradual resurgence as restrictions were relaxed. Major exceptions include anti-social behavior and drug crimes. Findings shed light on the opportunity structures for crime and the nuances of using police records to study crime during the pandemic.

Crime Science 2021 10:6

By J. Sean Doody, Joan A. Reid, Klejdis Bilali, Jennifer Diaz and Nichole Mattheus

Despite the immense impact of wildlife trafficking, comparisons of the profits, costs, and seriousness of crime consistently rank wildlife trafficking lower relative to human trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons trafficking. Using the published literature and current events, we make the case, when properly viewed within the context of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases transmitted from wildlife, that wildlife trafficking is the most costly and perhaps the most serious form of trafficking. Our synthesis should raise awareness of the seriousness of wildlife trafficking for humans, thereby inducing strategic policy decisions that boost criminal justice initiatives and resources to combat wildlife trafficking.

Crime Sci. 2021; 10(1): 19.

By David Buil-Gil, Yongyu Zeng and Steven Kemp

Much research has shown that the first lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with changes in routine activities and, therefore, changes in crime. While several types of violent and property crime decreased immediately after the first lockdown, online crime rates increased. Nevertheless, little research has explored the relationship between multiple lockdowns and crime in the mid-term. Furthermore, few studies have analysed potentially contrasting trends in offline and online crimes using the same dataset. To fill these gaps in research, the present article employs interrupted time-series analysis to examine the effects on offline and online crime of the three lockdown orders implemented in Northern Ireland. We analyse crime data recorded by the police between April 2015 and May 2021. Results show that many types of traditional offline crime decreased after the lockdowns but that they subsequently bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, results appear to indicate that cyber-enabled fraud and cyber-dependent crime rose alongside lockdown-induced changes in online habits and remained higher than before COVID-19. It is likely that the pandemic accelerated the long-term upward trend in online crime. We also find that lockdowns with stay-at-home orders had a clearer impact on crime than those without. Our results contribute to understanding how responses to pandemics can influence crime trends in the mid-term as well as helping identify the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on crime, which can strengthen the evidence base for policy and practice.

Crime Science 2021 10:26

By Theodore S. Lentz, Rebecca Headley Konkel, Hailey Gallagher and Dominick Ratkowski

Restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted people’s daily routine activities. Rooted in crime pattern and routine activity theories, this study tests whether the enactment of a Safer-at-Home mandate was associated with changes in the distance between individuals’ home addresses and the locations of where they committed crimes (i.e., residence-to-crime distance). Analyses are based on violent (N=282), property (N=1552), and disorder crimes (N=1092) reported to one police department located in a United States’ Midwest suburb. Multilevel models show that residence-to-crime distances were significantly shorter during the Safer-at-Home order, compared to the pre- and post-Safer-at-Home timeframes, while controlling for individual and neighborhood characteristics. Additionally, these relationships varied by crime type. Consistent with the literature, the findings support the argument that individuals tend to offend relatively near their home address. The current findings extend the state of the literature by highlighting how disruptions to daily routine activities stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic led to alterations in crime patterns, in which analyses indicated shorter distances between home address and offense locations.

Crime Science 2022 11:12

By Sarah Hodgkinson, Anthony Dixon, Eric Halford and Graham Farrell

Research on pandemic domestic abuse trends has produced inconsistent findings reflecting differences in definitions, data and method. This study analyses 43,488 domestic abuse crimes recorded by a UK police force. Metrics and analytic approaches are tailored to address key methodological issues in three key ways. First, it was hypothesised that reporting rates changed during lockdown, so natural language processing was used to interrogate untapped free-text information in police records to develop a novel indicator of change in reporting. Second, it was hypothesised that abuse would change differentially for those cohabiting (due to physical proximity) compared to non-cohabitees, which was assessed via a proxy measure. Third, the analytic approaches used were change-point analysis and anomaly detection: these are more independent than regression analysis for present purposes in gauging the timing and duration of significant change. However, the main findings were largely contrary to expectation: (1) domestic abuse did not increase during the first national lockdown in early 2020 but increased across a prolonged post-lockdown period, (2) the post-lockdown increase did not reflect change in reporting by victims, and; (3) the proportion of abuse between cohabiting partners, at around 40 percent of the total, did not increase significantly during or after the lockdown. The implications of these unanticipated findings are discussed.

Crime Science 2023 12:12

By Takahito Shimada, Ai Suzuki and Mamoru Aremiya

Background: City-specific temporal analysis has been commonly used to investigate the impact of COVID-19-related behavioural regulation policies on crime. However, these previous studies fail to consider differences in the intensity of intervention among cities and the impact of these behavioural regulation policies on crime trends nationwide. This study performs panel data analyses to examine how the declaration of a state of emergency (SoE) affected ambient population and crime in Japan, taking advantage of the fact that the SoE was implemented at different times in different prefectures. Methods: The current study uses two sets of panel data of 47 prefectures for 22 weeks from February to July 2020: (1) the data on ambient population in five types of locations provided by the Google Mobility Reports, and (2) official crime data of six types of crime: residential burglary, commercial burglary, theft of/from vehicle, bicycle theft, sexual assault, and violence and injury. Firstly, an ordinary least squares regression analysis was performed to examine the impact of the SoE on the ambient population. Then a negative binomial model with fixed effects was adopted to examine the effect of the ambient population on the crime trends. Findings: The SoE declaration was found to increase the ambient population in 'residential', and decrease that in other settings including 'workplaces', 'transit stations', and 'retail and recreation' in targeted prefectures. Spill-over effects of the SoE were observed on the ambient population of non-SoE prefectures. The ambient population have impacted five out of the six types of crime examined, except for sexual assault. After controlling for the ambient population, we observed an increase in commercial burglary and theft of/from the vehicle in all prefectures during the SoE weeks, compared to the weeks when the SoE was not declared. Conclusions: The declaration of the SoE during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the ambient population in the SoE-prefectures, resulting the changes in crime levels as well. In addition, the implementation of the SoE in specific prefectures was found to have a contextual impact on national-level crime trends. Furthermore, the implementation of the SoE caused changes in some crime types that could not be explained by the changes in the ambient population, suggesting that the implementation of the SoE affected offenders' decision-making. It is also worth noting that the changes in ambient population and crime trends during the pandemic were observed in Japan where the behavioural regulation policy without law enforcement was introduced.

Crime Science 2023 12:13

By Sarah Brayne and Angele Christin

The number of predictive technologies used in the U.S. criminal justice system is on the rise. Yet there is little research to date on the reception of algorithms in criminal justice institutions. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted within a large urban police department and a midsized criminal court to assess the impact of predictive technologies at different stages of the criminal justice process. We first show that similar arguments are mobilized to justify the adoption of predictive algorithms in law enforcement and criminal courts. In both cases, algorithms are described as more objective and efficient than humans’ discretionary judgment. We then study how predictive algorithms are used, documenting similar processes of professional resistance among law enforcement and legal professionals. In both cases, resentment toward predictive algorithms is fueled by fears of deskilling and heightened managerial surveillance. Two practical strategies of resistance emerge: footdragging and data obfuscation. We conclude by discussing how predictive technologies do not replace, but rather displace discretion to less visible—and therefore less accountable— areas within organizations, a shift which has important implications for inequality and the administration of justice in the age of big data.

Social Problems, Volume 68, Issue 3, August 2021, Pages 608–624,