By Europol

This report is the first of its kind to analyse in depth the characteristics that make criminal actors particularly threatening. Enhancing law enforcement’s understanding of their functioning and core capabilities will further strengthen the fight against serious and organised crime. It is essential as a complement to a commodity-based approach. Context: enhancing our understanding of criminal networks 1 Europol, 2021, European Union Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment, A corrupting influence: the infiltration and undermining of Europe’s economy and society by organised crime, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, accessible at https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/ sites/default/files/documents/socta2021_1.pdf 2 Belgian presidency, Council of the European Union, Priorities, accessed on 8 February 2024, accessible at https://belgian-presidency.consilium.europa.eu/ en/programme/priorities/ 3 European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the EU roadmap to fight drug trafficking and organised crime, COM/2023/641 final, 18 October 2023, accessible at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52023DC0641 Serious and organised crime is omnipresent and continues to represent a major threat to the internal security of the European Union (EU). In order to fight it effectively, law enforcement needs to understand the key areas where it should prioritise resources. The threat posed by organised crime is often assessed through the dimension of criminal markets and criminal activities. However, the picture is incomplete without analysing the capabilities and intent of its key players. One key approach is to focus on and address the most threatening criminal networks that affect the internal security of the EU. Understanding their critical strengths is paramount as these are the criminal networks that exert significant negative impact on the societies and economies of EU Member States. The EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) 2021 brought the changing relationships between criminal actors into focus in an organised crime landscape that is characterised by a networked environment where cooperation between criminals is fluid, systematic and profit-driven.1 The concept ‘criminal network’ reflects the nature of the current criminal landscape, which is complex and includes a variety of criminal associations. Criminal networks involve collaboration between groups and individuals – groups of different organisational character, and individuals who are either embedded within a particular network or operate outside of it. This analysis brings to light the characteristics of those criminal networks that pose the highest threat to the EU’s internal security. The aim is to strenghten our understanding of criminal networks, in order to help policy makers and law enforcement make informed policy and operational decisions to tackle them. This report responds to several initiatives that highlight the need to enhance our understanding of what shapes the threat of criminal networks, including by the EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers and the current Belgian Presidency of the EU Council.2 The results of the analysis will complement the commodity-based assessment of the EU SOCTA 2025 with a deeper criminal-actor focused analysis. It will also support the EMPACT Operational Action Plan on High-Risk Criminal Networks on developing a methodology to identify the most threatening criminal networks. It forms part of the EU roadmap to fight drug trafficking and organised crime under Action 4.  

Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.2024. 60p.

Perrin, Benjamin

This report considers the upcoming 2010 Olympics in Vancouver in the context of Canada's human trafficking response to date, and makes recommendations to ensure that this event is not a flashpoint for human trafficking.

Calgary: Future Group, 2007. 24p.

By Cynthia Dion-Schwarz, Alt. Authors: Nathan Ryan, Julia A. Thompson, Erik Silfversten, Giacomo Persi Paoli

This report profiles the cybersecurity threat landscape faced by Japan as the host nation of the 2020 Summer Games and 2020 Paralympic Games of the XXXII Olympiad. The overarching objective of the study was to produce a threat actor typology, based on a risk assessment of the Tokyo 2020 threat landscape. Synthesizing multiple sources of primary and secondary data, the study team developed a visualization of the threat landscape that provides an at-a-glance overview to guide Olympic security planners, computer emergency response teams, and policy- and decisionmakers as they prioritize and address cybersecurity threats. The risk assessment also considered the motivation, sophistication, and propensity of threat actors to collude with one another. This research could be valuable to a wide variety of stakeholders and will be of particular interest to stakeholders involved in planning and ensuring the security of the Tokyo 2020 Games. The research also serves as a reference to inform ongoing policy debates on cybersecurity preparations for mega-events and as a basis for future research.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018. 97p.

By Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt and Stephanie Fahy

Though recognition of the importance and severity of human trafficking has grown in recent years, the identification and investigation of human trafficking cases remains a complex undertaking for local law enforcement. Effectively responding to human trafficking requires officers to notice and identify victims who often have been hidden from or had poor relationships with law enforcement in the past (e.g., women in prostitution, migrants, immigrant community member, and poor women). Sometimes officers may be reluctant to intervene in sex and labor trafficking situations due to a belief that victims were complicit with their own victimization. Local law enforcement response is further complicated by immigration issues since many local agencies have made a decision to not inquire about citizen status during routine policing activities as a means of building trust and confidence in the local community. Additionally, the crime of human trafficking may take backseat to other institutional priorities such as violence and drugs. Finally, officers must look at old problems or traditional crime categories such as prostitution through a different lens and therefore reclassify "offenders" such as prostitutes as victims.

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  Since the enforcement of the law in the United States is predominately carried out by the thousands of local, county and state agencies representing diverse environments and local crime problems and coming from a variety of different organizational structures, fully understanding how law enforcement perceives and responds to the problem of human trafficking in the United States necessitates inquiry into the specific experiences of these agencies. The majority of research on law enforcement responses to human trafficking to date has focused on the experiences of a narrow number of large municipal police departments who were perceived to be most likely to come into contact with incidents of human trafficking. In response, this project addresses four main areas: 1) the perceptions of trafficking held by law enf rcement and the preparation agencies have taken to address the problem, 2) the frequency in which law enforcement identifies and investigates cases of human trafficking and 3) the characteristics of those cases investigated by law enforcement and 4) the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases. Description text goes here

Boston: Northeastern University, Institute on Race and Justice, 2008. 256p.