By Piotr Bąkowski and Martina Prpic

Drawing on diverse underlying rationales, policies on prostitution – in the EU and elsewhere – vary both in their objectives and in their strategies for achieving those objectives. These distinctions manifest in the terminology used, with 'prostitution' typically favoured by stakeholders aiming to curb or eradicate the practice, and the term 'sex work' embraced by those who view prostitution as a legitimate form of employment. Formulating policies on prostitution presents numerous challenges, including a lack of comprehensive statistical data. However, these policies often lack emphasis on the importance of evidence-based approaches – shaped instead by ideological beliefs and moral perspectives. While discussions on prostitution transcend feminism, feminist ideologies have had a particularly strong impact on policy formulation. Academic classification of prostitution policies into national models or regimes is subject to ongoing debate, with criticism directed towards the 'model approach' for oversimplifying the complexities of these policies and failing to capture regional and local variations. Traditionally, policies have been categorised into overarching ideological approaches: 'prohibitionism', which seeks to outlaw all aspects of prostitution; and 'abolitionism', which focuses on criminalising the facilitation and purchase, but not the sale of sexual services. However, there is a growing tendency towards classifying policies as falling under criminalisation (of purchase or sale), legalisation (regulation) or decriminalisation. Given the EU's lack of explicit authority to regulate prostitution, which falls within the exclusive competence of individual Member States, stakeholders both within and outside EU institutions advocate framing prostitution as a problem linked to areas where the EU does have competence; these include gender equality, violence against women, human trafficking, and the free movement of services. With the European Commission and the Council largely silent on the issue, debates predominantly occur within the European Parliament, and are marked by strong disagreements between Members subscribing to opposing approaches. Prostitution is subject to varying regulations across the EU, leading to a diverse array of national legislative and policy frameworks. Member States differ as to how they address the sale or purchase of sex, as well as the exploitation of prostitution. This variety is due not only to EU Member States' different historical and cultural backgrounds, but also to the current local state of affairs, especially as regards the situation in the field, and the priorities of the governments in power. In some Member States, there is a strong concern that prostitution constitutes violence against women. Those States usually tend to penalise buyers of sexual services. By contrast, some other Member States recognise that 'sex work' is a voluntary choice for some and tailor their legal frameworks accordingly.

Brussels: European Parliamentary Research Service, 2024. 39p.

By Jeanne Batalova, Andriy Shymonyak, and Michelle Mittelstadt

  Although international migrants account for just 3.5 percent of the world’s population, their number—almost 272 million people as of 2019—is far from insubstantial. Current and historical research shows that immigration brings significant and long-lasting benefits to countries of destination and origin and to migrants and their families alike. But it also shows that immigration often comes with tremendous challenges for individuals, communities, and institutions. In the United States, a country with a long and complex immigration history, public and political debates that started well back into the 18th century about the size and type of immigration, as well as its socioeconomic impacts, show no sign of abating. And as other countries around the world become migrant-sending, receiving, or transit places (or frequently a combination), migration—whether voluntary or forced—has arguably earned a prime and enduring spot on national and international policy agendas. It also continues to capture significant public and media attention. What is often missing from these conversations is accurate, complete data about who these immigrants are, why they come and leave, and what places they occupy in the socioeconomic hierarchies of their sending and destination countries. In this edition, Immigration Data Matters, which updates an earlier Population Reference Bureau - Migration Policy Institute guide, we have significantly expanded a list of online resources that provide authoritative migration-related data and statistics to help inform understanding of this phenomenon in the United States and globally. As before, our main guiding principle is to offer data from population censuses and surveys, administrative datasets, and new analyses that can help our audience understand the size of immigrant populations and inflows and outflows, enforcement actions, public opinion, historical trends, citizenship acquisition, and many other aspects. Here we list and describe more than 250 data resources, half U.S., half international. These resources are collected or compiled by a wide range of sources, including government statistical agencies, international organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and reputable research organizations. We use these resources in our own research, and while the list is by no means exhaustive, our goal is to share the most accurate, relevant, publicly available migration-related data, in one user-friendly and accessible guide. We hope this guide helps bring more knowledge to an issue area where the facts are often missing  

Migration Policy Institute and The   Population Reference Bureau , 2020. 49p.

By The International Crisis Group

What’s new? With its “total peace” policy, the Colombian government aims to engage all the country’s armed groups in talks, but it has no dialogue underway with the largest armed criminal outfit, the Gaitanista Self-Defence Force. This gap is significant, given the Gaitanistas’ deep pockets and their drive to expand. Why does it matter?From their Atlantic coast stronghold, where they run some of the country’s main drug trafficking routes as well as migrant smuggling rackets, the Gaitanistas exercise coercive control of numerous communities. If they remain outside peace talks, they could undermine negotiations with other groups or capitalise on their demobilisation. What should be done?Bogotá should start down a path of progressively more substantive discussions with the Gaitanistas aiming, first, to reduce violence against civilians and, secondly, to discuss legal conditions for laying down arms. In parallel, the police and military should continue operations to protect civilians and press the group toward talks. Latin America Report N°105

Brussels, Belgium: International Crisis Group 2024. 52p.

By David C. Brotherton, and Follow Rafael Gude

Since 2007, the Ecuadorian approach to crime control has emphasized efforts to reach higher levels of social control based on policies of social inclusion and innovations in criminal justice and police reform. One innovative aspect of this approach was the decision to legalize a number of street gangs in 2007. The government claims the success of these policies can be seen in homicide rates that have fallen from 15.35 per 100,000 in 2011 to 5 per 100,000 in 2017. However, little is understood about the factors and their combination that have produced this outcome. To explore this phenomenon, we developed a research project focusing on the impact of street gangs involved in processes of social inclusion on violence reduction. From April to October 2017, we collected multiple data sets including 60 face-to-face interviews with members from four different street subcultures in several field sites, field observations and archival materials to answer two primary questions: How has the relationship between street groups and state agencies changed in the past 10 years? How has this changed relationship contributed to a hitherto unexamined role in the homicide reduction phenomenon of Ecuador? We found that legalization helped reduce violence and criminality drastically while providing a space, both culturally and legally, to transform the social capital of the gang into effective vehicles of behavioral change. In policy terms, we argue that the social inclusion approach to street gangs should be continued and highlighted as a model of best practices of the state.

Washington, DC: IDB, 2018.

By Ian Tennant and Prem Mahadevan

Summary This briefing note summarises the GI-TOC’s research and experiences in engaging with and supporting civil society responses to organised crime. This is provided in the context of the ongoing threats and shrinking space for civil society, and a need for policymakers and officials to understand civil society’s role, value and potential. It is hoped that this briefing note can provide researchers and officials with a background briefing that could enable improved policy responses aimed at supporting civil society as part of whole-of-society efforts to prevent and counter organised crime.

Briefing Note 27

The Hague: Serious Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOC ACE) 2024. 10p.

By Karamoja–Turkana and the Community Research Team 

Ipoln the Karamoja and Turkana border regions of Uganda and Kenya, there is widespread violence including armed robbery, rape, and human rights abuses, yet community complaints about failures of governance remain largely unaddressed. This Policy Briefing highlights how different insecurities reinforce one another in ways exacerbated by the international border. It stresses the need for fulfilment of the two governments’ commitments to cross-border solutions, and suggests that international policy actors can help communities gain leverage with governments towards building trustworthy and effective peace and security institutions.

IDS Policy Briefing 214,

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2023. 4p.

By Anine Kriegler

Cannabis legalization has the potential to weaken organized crime, but it can just as easily strengthen it unless a balance is found between restriction and liberalization, coordinated across both the supply and demand sides of the market. South Africa’s current cannabis policy lacks coherence, with reforms driven more by legal challenges than by strategic policymaking, posing challenges in effectively countering organized crime.

This paper summarizes the history and status of cannabis decriminalization in South Africa and draws on a review of literature to identify a key set of variables that determine the impact of legalization on organized crime: the type and degree of restrictiveness of the new regulations; various cultural, socio-economic, and political factors; features of the criminal justice system; and the structure and nature of criminal organization in the illegal cannabis market.

Reflections are provided on what these suggest about the likely impact of South African cannabis legalization on organized crime, and potential lessons and recommendations are proposed for effective policy reform in South Africa, as well as guidance for similar decision-making in other contexts.

Effective reform requires integrating marginalized communities and black-market participants into the legal market, along with considerations for managing legal supply, strategic enforcement against criminal gangs, and public health education to ensure a comprehensive approach to reducing organized crime. A phased implementation of regulatory frameworks, ongoing monitoring, and investment in data collection are essential to assess and optimize the impact of legalization on organized crime. Geneva: SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime , 2024. 29p.

By Tracit

In pursuit of various social, religious, health, or economic objectives governments have imposed a long history of regulatory controls on the producers and consumers of alcoholic beverages. Minimum age purchase restrictions are probably the most renowned and common. Dry laws and other forms of supply restrictions are probably the most notorious. For the most part, the failure of America’s experiment with Prohibition has discouraged governments from imposing them. That is until the onset of the global COVID19 pandemic, when several countries opted for some form of dry law on alcoholic beverages as a tool to mitigate the impact of the virus. Whether or not dry laws were effective in addressing the pandemic itself is not the purpose of this report. The ambition here is to analyze the economic and social impacts of dry laws beyond public health objectives, specifically those consequences associated with illicit trade. The findings are intended to yield valuable lessons from the experience with COVID19 prohibitions, which can be applied to shaping future policymaking at the intersection of alcohol regulation, illicit trade and public welfare.   

New York: Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (Tracit), 2021. 34p.

By Juan Camilo Castillo

Experience from the last decade in Colombia and Mexico suggests that violence increases when governments achieve their objective of beheading and fragmenting drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). In this paper I provide a theoretical framework to understand this behavior. Drawing elements from industrial organization, I model DTOs as firms that collude by not attacking each other in order to increase their profits. DTOs always collude when they interact repeatedly; thus, previous analyses focusing on a static Nash equilibrium miss an important part of the dynamics between DTOs. I show that a peaceful equilibrium arises if there are only a few DTOs that care enough about the future. Policies resulting either in a larger number of DTOs or in more impatient leaders increase violence between DTOs without reducing supply. On the other hand, policies that reduce the productivity of DTOs, without directly attacking their leaders and fragmenting them, are more desirable since they can curb supply, although this comes at the cost of increased violence if the elasticity of demand is below a certain threshold. I calculate this threshold, which is a refinement of the value suggested by Becker et al. (2006) for consumer markets.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE2013. 52p.

Edited by Laura Y. Calderón, Kimberly Heinle, Rita E. Kuckertz, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk

This is the second edition of Organized Crime and Violence in Mexico. Like last year’s report, this study builds on 10 years of reports published by Justice in Mexico under the title Drug Violence in Mexico. The Drug Violence in Mexico series examined patterns of crime and violence attributable to organized crime, and particularly drug trafficking organizations, as well as other related issues, such as judicial sector reform and human rights in Mexico. At the 10 year mark, in 2019, this series of reports was retitled “Organized Crime and Violence in Mexico” to reflect the proliferation and diversification of organized crime groups over the last decade and the corresponding wave of violence. As in previous years, this report compiles the most recent data. and analysis of crime, violence, and rule of law in Mexico to help inform government officials, policy analysts, and the general public.

San Diego: Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, 2021. 70p.