By Jonathan Goodhand, Patrick Meehan, Camilo Acero, and Jan Koehler

This research paper is the second in a three-part series analysing the nexus between paramilitaries, illicit economies and organised crime in borderland and frontier regions. This research challenges the idea that paramilitaries are symptomatic of state breakdown, flourishing in marginal spaces suffering from ‘governance deficits’; and that they can primarily be understood as apolitical, predatory self-enriching actors, driven by economic motives, and operating outside formal political systems.

In this research paper, a set of detailed case studies are presented that explore coercive brokerage in Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar that seek to address these ideas, drawing upon data and analysis generated by a four-year Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project, Drugs & (Dis)order (https://drugs-disorder.soas.ac.uk), and other relevant research.

Birmingham, UK:  University of Birmingham. 2023, 65pg

By Alessia Rossi

Organised crime is one of the most important threats to the functioning of the rule of law and democracy. This research will analyse why the ‘ndrangheta, with its structure, ranks among the most powerful mafias. Specifically, consideration will be paid to cocaine trafficking, which is their most profitable supply channel. One of their main strengths is having ‘ndrine located all over the world, especially in Latin America. There, brokers manage to contract with key organisations, such as the Urabeños. Moreover, to carry out operations mainly via containers, they have trusted corrupt accomplices in the ports. In the latter, the ‘ndrangheta may not only have influence but even be embedded, as in the case of the port of Gioia Tauro. Finally, it will be examined not only the transnational approach but also the need for a national response of increasing port security in limiting the infiltration of the Calabrian mafia.  

Fiesole FI, Italy:  Transnational Governance of the European University Institute, 2023. 43p.

By Mark Galeotti

Time of Troubles is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the Ukraine war on the Russian underworld. The war’s human and economic costs, along with the political retrenchment of a regime under growing pressure, are all transforming illegal markets and organized crime in Russia with potentially destabilizing effects. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent undeclared conflict in the Donbas region had already begun to reshape the Russian underworld. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, brought dramatic changes. An almost complete split between Ukrainian and Russian criminal groups has had a significant negative impact, not least because of their dominance over transnational narcotics flows. At the same time, new opportunities to smuggle sanctioned luxury goods for the rich and critical components for the defence–industrial complex have enriched and elevated other gangs, especially those able to exploit and control routes through Belarus, Armenia and Central Asia. All this is putting pressure on the underworld status quo – and the state’s capacity to manage and maintain it – and even reshaping the relationship between Russian criminal networks and their partners and subsidiaries abroad. Even when the war does end, some form of sanctions or trade and investment controls will almost certainly remain in place. The Kremlin will find it difficult to integrate large numbers of traumatized, impoverished and disillusioned veterans, many of whom risk drifting into organized and disorganized crime. Condemned to pariah status and looking for alternative ways to support itself, the state may turn its existing ad hoc relations with the underworld into something much more focused and institutionalized, creating new dangers for its neighbours and the global order as a whole. The stakes could hardly be higher.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 72p.

By InfoAmazonia, Armando.Info and La Liga Contra el Silencio), Amazon Watch and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, covering some 7 million square kilometres and linking nine countries, has become one of the main sources and transit points for criminal economies in Latin America. From shipments of cocaine, gold and timber moving down its hundreds of rivers, to the makeshift airstrips that facilitate the nightly movement of small contraband planes, the Amazon is now home to a complex underground economy that feeds growing global demand but also fuels violence and deforestation. The unchecked actions of increasingly powerful criminal organizations pose an existential threat to the planet’s most biodiverse region and the communities it shelters. Over the past decade, the Amazon has become one of the most dangerous regions in Latin America, with marginalized communities bearing the brunt of the violence. In Brazil, for example, indigenous communities have been systematically subjected to violent invasions by armed garimpeiros (miners), while in Colombia’s nine Amazon departments, where 43 massacres have been documented since 2020, non-state armed groups terrorize rural communities. In Peru, drug traffickers are increasingly recruiting indigenous children to work on coca plantations, and guerrilla groups are sending entire families to work in illegal gold mines in Venezuela. In 2022, one in five killings of land and environmental defenders worldwide occurred in the Amazon.As demand for illicit goods, particularly cocaine, has risen to historically high levels and the price of gold has increased dramatically since the early 2000s, so have criminal opportunities.4 This, combined with a low state presence, high levels of corruption, decades of faltering security strategies and a lack of coordination between states, has created the perfect environment for some of Latin America’s most prolific criminal groups to reorganize and take over. The reshuffling of the local criminal ecosystem – which includes Colombian guerrilla groups, Brazilian gangs, Peruvian criminal groups (including drug and human traffickers) and Venezuelan crime syndicates – has resulted in some groups being wiped off the map, leaving room for others to emerge or expand. Through field research and data analysis, Amazon Underworld found that non-state armed groups or crime syndicates are active in 70 per cent of the municipalities investigated in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela (see the methodology section below), and that all of the Amazon’s borders have at least one armed actor on one side of the divide.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.2023. 40p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Since 2007, negotiations with violent organised crime groups (hereafter, “criminal groups”) have been increasingly featured in government, church and NGO responses to violent criminality in Latin America and the Caribbean. They are enormously controversial, both politically and ethically. Many consider them unacceptable and counterproductive, as they may involve risks such as legitimising the criminal group or emboldening others to engage in criminal activities. The relative rarity with which such negotiations produce a deal and the great uncertainty as to their long-term outcomes are further sources of controversy. The sensitivity and risks are so large that some who have participated in the situations examined in this paper are wary of calling them “negotiations.” They may avoid the term even when they have bargained from a position of superiority or succeeded in striking a deal. In attempting to address the challenges criminal groups present, most countries understandably employ a tough-on-crime stance. Any other would be hard to justify to the public. Yet, where the activities of these groups have become especially pervasive and violent, there is often a lack of deterrence capacity, leading to public anger and desperation. Negotiation can thus sometimes become an option and may be pursued in conjunction with coercive tactics, institutional strengthening, legalisation measures and more. As a diplomat involved in the talks with criminal gangs in El Salvador and Honduras put it, by negotiating “we were not trying to get to heaven; we were just trying to avoid hell.” But if negotiation with criminal groups sometimes becomes necessary, which group characteristics and contextual factors must be taken into account? What end-goals are appropriate and realistic? What inducements, concessions and redlines must be contemplated? And how do such processes compare and contrast with negotiations conducted with politically-motivated insurgents? These are just some of the questions examined in this paper.   

Barcelona, Spain: The Institute for Integrated Transitions, 2021. 47p,

By Summer Walker

What happens in America often reverberates globally. The complex global emergency of COVID-19 has now met waves of uprising around anti-racism, inequality and the systems that perpetuate them. Many policing tactics deployed in communities around the world derive from policy responses to curb illicit markets. Some of the most persistent and militarized responses in communities are predicated upon fighting transnational organized crime. And these often occur in communities of colour, immigrant neighbourhoods, and marginalized and lower-income areas. These current debates about power, use of force and inequality provide a lens to examine responses to transnational organized crime. This brief uses the concept of illicit markets to examine organized crime as the systems and actors that make up these markets, including the government responses to them. Transnational illicit markets, such as the illicit drug or wildlife trade, connect a wide range of actors – from farmers and fishermen to hitmen and cartel bosses. Organized criminal groups, the most common manifestation of how organized crime is carried out, include cartels, armed militias and gangs. But they can also include members of political parties, corporations, businesses and local governments. By looking at the markets more broadly and then identifying where responses are targeted, one can see how transnational organized-crime responses create their own logic of power and exclusion, and are deployed to manage communities. This policy brief begins by discussing the current US context of BLM protests, then situates the debate within the transnational organized-crime agenda, and addresses the implications for responses that align with calls for social and economic justice.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.2020. 21p.

By Gemma Dipoppa

The widespread presence of criminal organizations in strong states presents a theoretical and empirical puzzle. How do criminal organizations — widely believed to thrive in weak states — expand to states with strong capacity? I argue that criminal groups expand where they can strike agreements with local actors for the provision of illegal resources they control, and that this practice is particularly profitable in strong states where costs from prosecution are higher. Using a novel measure of organized crime presence, I show that (1) increases in demand for unskilled labor — and in criminals’ capacity to fill it by exploiting migrants — allowed southern Italian mafias to expand to the north, and that (2) mafia expansion gave a persistent electoral advantage to political parties collaborating with them. This suggests the need to reconceptualize criminal organizations not only as substitutes for weak states but as complements to strong states.

Preprint, 2021. 59p.

By  Anthony Morgan, Christopher Dowling and Isabella Voce 

Using national data on the criminal histories of 5,669 known outlaw motorcycle gang (OMCG) members from 39 gangs, this paper explores the prevalence of violent and organised crime offending among Australian OMCGs. Violent and profit-motivated offending was common among OMCG members. One in four had been apprehended for a recent offence involving violence and intimidation, and one in eight for organised crime-type offences. Offending and associated harm was concentrated among a relatively small group of members. Half of all chapters and three-quarters of gangs had members recently involved in organised crime-type offending. In 11 gangs, both office bearers and other members were involved in organised crime, indicative of their status as criminal organisations. These gangs were also among those with the highest prevalence of violence and intimidation offences. 

Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology. Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, #586. February 2020. 18pg

By Christopher Dowling, Dominic Boland, Anthony Morgan, Julianne Webster, Yi-Ning Chiu and Roger Lowe 

This study explores changes to the internal culture of a sample of Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs). We analysed data from 39 in-depth interviews with former OMCG members in Queensland to discern changes in recruitment practices, hierarchies and governance processes, as well as values, norms and relationships experienced and observed while members of an OMCG. Structurally, clubs changed little, although participants described how members were increasingly using the structures and systems of clubs for their own benefit. Changes were noted in recruitment practices, which were seen as increasingly geared towards enlisting violent, criminally-inclined men. There was also a perceived erosion of loyalty and camaraderie within OMCGs, with a shift towards younger, newer members who were seen as self-interested and financially motivated. These changes were contributing factors in decisions of many former members to disengage from OMCGs. 

Australia, Australia Institute of Criminology. Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 615. February 2021. 16pg