By Stephen Rolles

Global drug policy is rooted in a laudable urge to address the very real harms that non-medical psychoactive drugs can create. Such concerns have driven a prohibitionist global agenda: an agenda that gives clear and direct moral authority to those who support it, while casting those who are against it as ethically and politically irresponsible. However, such binary thinking can be problematic. By defining the most stringent prohibition as the most moral position, it makes nuanced consideration of the impacts of prohibition difficult. In particular, it makes it very difficult to look at and learn from the impacts and achievements of prohibition. Historic attempts to do so have foundered on a sense that analysing prohibition means questioning prohibition, and that questioning prohibition is in itself an immoral act—one that allies the questioner with the well known infamies of the world’s illegal drug trade. Ironically, supporting the status quo perpetuates that trade, and the harms that it creates.

It is not the purpose of this report to revisit these various findings; they are freely and easily available elsewhere. Rather, we seek to reconsider the management of illicit drugs in the light of the experience that they represent and embody. Using that experience, we will set out a blueprint for non-medical drug management policies that will minimise the harms that such drug use creates, both on a personal and on a societal level. In short, our goal is to define a set of practical and effective risk and harm management and reduction policies. Such policies will represent a clear and positive step towards the positive outcomes that prohibition has tried, and failed, to achieve. A strictly prohibitionist stance would understand them to be immoral, because they call for the legally regulated production and availability of many currently proscribed drugs. Transform’s position is, in fact, driven by an ethics of effectiveness, and as such represent an attempt to re-frame the global harm management debate in exclusively practical terms

London: Transform Drug Policy Foundation, 2009. 232p.

By Marie Claire Van Hout and Tim Bingham

This research aimed to assemble an evidence base around perceived anti-social behaviour associated with the provision of drug treatment in Dublin’s city centre, upon which to build a strategic response incorporating short/medium/long term goals and actions within the area. It will be used to guide discussions on how to reduce visibility of drug related public nuisance, improve public perceptions of safety in the area and provide comprehensive, safe, effective and appropriate treatment services within a series of short, medium and long-term strategies.

Dublin:Strategic Response Group, 2012. 187p.

By Tim McSweeney, Paul J. Turnbull, and Mike Hough

This summary sets out the main findings from a review of the recent literature on strategies to tackle illicit drug markets and distribution networks in the UK. The report was commissioned by the UK Drug Policy Commission and has been prepared by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law, King’s College London. The main literature searches for this review were conducted during late September 2007 using a number of search terms and bibliographic data sources. In drawing together the evidence for this review we aimed to answer four broad questions: • What is the nature and extent of the problem? • What are current UK responses? • What are effective strategies for dealing with these issues? • Where are the gaps in our knowledge and understanding? This review restricted itself to domestic measures for tackling the drugs trade. As well as production control (e.g. assisting the Afghan government to implement its National Drug Control Strategy), there are a range of measures as part of the current drug strategy that are aimed at tackling drug markets and distribution networks within the UK’s borders.

London: The UK Drug policy Commission, 2008. 90p.

By The UK Drug Policy Commission

Over the past ten years, UK drug strategies have increasingly focused on providing treatment and support services for drug-dependent offenders – who commit a disproportionate number of acquisitive crimes (e.g. shoplifting and burglary) – as a way of reducing overall crime levels. This criminal justice focus has been reinforced in the recent 2008 UK drug strategy (new Welsh and Scottish drug strategies are also being developed). The UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) has analysed the evidence for the effectiveness of these initiatives for reducing drug use and reoffending and of the wider impact of this more prominent criminal justice approach. To inform our analysis we commissioned an independent review of the published evidence from leading researchers at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), King’s College London. We also listened to policy experts, local commissioners, drug workers and current and ex-drug users.

London: The UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), 2008. 80p.

By The UK Drug Policy Commission

In this report, UKDPC proposes a radical rethink of how we structure our response to drug problems. It analyses the evidence for how policies and interventions could be improved, with recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to address the new and established challenges associated with drug use.

London: The UK Drug Policy Commission, 2012.173p.

By Dennis Earl Hoffman

According to the Elliot Ness myth, which has been widely disseminated through books, television shows, and movies, Ness and the Untouchables defeated Al Capone by marshaling superior firepower. In Scarface Al and the Crime Crusaders, Dennis Hoffman presents a fresh new perspective on the downfall of Al Capone. To debunk the Eliot Ness myth, he shows how a handful of private citizens brought Capone to justice by outsmarting him rather than by outgunning him.

Drawing on previously untapped sources, Hoffman dissects what he terms a “private war” against Capone. He traces the behind-the-scenes work of a few prominent Chicago businessmen from their successful lobbying of presidents Coolidge and Hoover on behalf of federal intervention to the trial, sentencing, and punishment of Al Capone. Hoffman also reconstructs in detail a number of privately sponsored citizen initiatives directed at stopping Capone. These private ventures included prosecuting the gangsters responsible for election crimes; establishing a crime lab to assist in gangbusting; underwriting the costs of the investigation of the Jake Lingle murder; stigmatizing Capone; and protecting the star witnesses for the prosecution in Al Capone’s income tax evasion case.

Hoffman suggests that as American society continues to be threatened by illegal drugs, gangs, and widespread violence, it is important to remember that the organized crime and political corruption of Prohibition-era Chicago were checked through the efforts of private citizens.

Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993. 205p.

By Mariana Viollaz and Jeni Klugman

In this note, we experiment with potential improvements on the measurement of violence in the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index to better reflect the reality on the ground in countries experiencing high levels of gang violence. First, we propose an extension to the measure of conflict from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program—currently the most comprehensive measure of organized violence—by including a more accurate number of deaths associated with gang violence alongside “battle deaths.” We show what difference this would make to WPS Index rankings for a set of four Central American countries and Mexico.

Washington, DC: Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, 2018. 12p.

Edited by Cynthia J. Arnson and Eric L. Olson

In early May 2011, dozens of gunmen entered a farm in Guatemala’s Petén region, murdering and decapitating 27 people. Guatemalan authorities as well as speculation in the press have blamed the Zetas, a violent Mexican drug trafficking cartel increasingly active in Guatemala and other parts of Central America . Whether a vengeance killing following the murder of a presumed drug lord, or a struggle amongst the Zetas and Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel for the control of territory and smuggling routes, the massacre underscores the vulnerability of the civilian population in unsecured border areas between Mexico and Guatemala, where narcotics and human trafficking flourish. In response, the government of President Álvaro Colom declared a state of siege similar to the one declared from December 2010-February 2011 in the department of Alta Verapaz. This incident and others like it underscore the serious threat to democratic governance, human rights, and the rule of law posed by organized crime in Central America. The international community has begun to address the burgeoning crisis and commit significant resources to the fight against crime and violence; indeed, not since the Central American wars of the 1980s-1980s has the region commanded so much attention in the international arena. To better understand the nature, origins, and evolution of organized crime in Central America, and thereby contribute to the efforts of policymakers and civil society to address it, the Latin American Program commissioned a series of case studies that looked at the countries of the so-called Northern Triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras— and at the broader regional context affecting national dynamics. Our interest was to understand more fully how organized crime has evolved in Central America, and to examine the links between organized crime and traffickers in Central America, Mexico and Colombia. What role does Central America play in the supply chain for illegal goods between the Andes and the United States, and how have trafficking organizations from these areas related to one another over time? The growing presence and activities of organized crime groups in Central America has worsened an already alarming crisis of citizen security. In mid- 2010, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported that Latin America had the highest levels of youth violence in the world . UN figures indicate that the rate of youth homicide in Latin America is more than double that of Africa, and 36 times the rate of developed countries . An oft-referenced study by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) noted in 2009 that the seven countries of Central America—Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama—register the highest levels of non-political violence in the world; this observation has been echoed in statements by the U.S. Department of Defense . The situation is most acute in the countries of the Northern Triangle6 . In El Salvador alone, sixty-eight percent of homicide victims are between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four, and nine out of ten victims are male7 . Countries such as Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Belize are also witnessing rising rates of insecurity associated with the increased presence of organized crime.

Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Latin American Program, 2011. 254p.

By Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk

This is one of a series of special reports that have been published on a semi-annual by Justice in Mexico since 2010, each of which examines issues related to crime and violence, judicial sector reform, and human rights in Mexico. The Drug Violence in Mexico report series examines patterns of crime and violence attributable to organized crime, and particularly drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. This report was authored by Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk, and builds on the work of past reports in this series. The report was formally released on April 10, 2014 and was made possible by the generous support of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This report does not represent the views or opinions of the University of San Diego or Justice in Mexico’s sponsoring organizations.

San Diego: Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, 2016. 58p.

By Celina Realuyo

The illicit drug trade in the Americas has been evolving and expanding from plant-based narcotics like cocaine, heroin and marijuana to potent synthetic substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine. Since the 1980’s, the U.S. war on drugs focused on countering cocaine trafficking that made the Colombian and Mexican cartels immensely wealthy and powerful. Over the past decade, U.S. narcotic consumption has shifted significantly from cocaine to opioids and methamphetamine, resulting in an unprecedented opioid epidemic with 72,037 drug overdose deaths recorded in 2017 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, Mexican cartels are increasingly trafficking opioids and synthetics to respond to market changes in the U.S. The atomization of large cartels and increased competition to dominate trafficking routes resulted in record levels of violence in Mexico with 29,111 homicides registered in 2018. The October 17, 2019 failed Mexican government operation to capture one of El Chapo Guzman’s sons demonstrated how the Sinaloa cartel outgunned Mexican security forces and terrorized the city of Culiacan for hours. This paper will examine the evolving drug trade across the Americas from plant-based to synthetic drugs, the role of the Darknet as a force multiplier for the narcotics market, and U.S. and Mexican national and international efforts to address the dynamic drug trade and associated violence. Narcotics trafficking continues to be the most lucrative illicit activity in the world and is increasingly adapting and leveraging cyberspace. Drug demand changes are impacting the U.S. and Mexican security in different but equally concerning ways. As cocaine production in Colombia reaches its highest levels in history consumption in the U.S. is falling. As a result, cocaine traffickers are seeking new markets as far as Asia and Europe. Meanwhile, heroin use in the U.S. has spread across suburban and rural communities and socioeconomic classes with over 90% of heroin in the U.S. originating from Mexico. Potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl have become more prevalent and popular in the U.S. resulting in the tragic opioid crisis. Mexican cartels are increasingly involved in heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking into the U.S. and becoming more formidable. The U.S. and Mexico need to better understand this shift in narcotics demand and the corresponding modifications in the production, marketing, distribution and consumption aspects of drug trafficking. As narcotic offerings diversify and the Internet plays a more critical role in drug trafficking, these changes are affecting public health and security in the U.S. and Mexico. Both governments must strive to design timely responses to reduce demand, increase treatment, and improve supply reduction strategies through increased interagency and international cooperation as narcotics trafficking has increasingly adapted to new trends and enforcement efforts.

Washington, DC: Wilson Center, Mexico Institute, 2020. 16p.

By Rolando Navarro Gómez

Authorized to Steal: Organized Crime Networks Launder Illegal Timber from the Peruvian Amazon reveals the extent to which public officials systematically enable criminal networks to illegally harvest timber in Peru. It identifies by name 34 Peruvian government officials who have been complicit in laundering timber from harvest to sale. In addition, it elaborates the administrative, civil, and criminal penalties officials could face for their role in enabling illegal logging and explores how the failure to enforce these penalties allows the continued proliferation of illegal practices in Peru’s logging sector.

Washington, DC: Center for International Criminal Law, 2019. 54p.

By Livia Wagner

Throughout history, man has venerated gold. Gold was the first of the three gifts of the Magi to Jesus. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the values of world currencies were fixed in terms of gold (the Gold Standard). Olympic athletes vie for gold medals and the best footballer in the world is awarded the Ballon d’Or. An extremely well behaved child is ‘as good as gold’ and a generous person has ‘a heart of gold’.

It is only natural to think positively about gold, just as it is equally natural to think negatively about drugs. But, as the Global Initiative proves in its latest research report: “Organised Crime and Illegally Mined Gold in Latin America”, illegally mined gold is now more important to organized crime in some countries of Latin America than narcotics:

In Peru and Colombia – the largest cocaine producers in the world – the value of illegal gold exports now exceeds the value of cocaine exports.

Illegal mining is the easiest and most profitable way to launder money in the history of Colombian drug trafficking.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, 2016. 100p.

By Cassie Dummett and Arthur Blundell

While subsistence agriculture and logging still contribute to deforestation, commercial-scale agricultural expansion is now recognized as by far the single largest driver of deforestation worldwide and thus also of greenhouse gas emissions from land-use change.

Several initiatives have quantified how much and where deforestation is driven by commercial agriculture, and even how much of this deforestation was driven by international trade. However, fewer analyses have been able to determine the extent to which agricultural commodities are being grown on lands that have been illegally cleared of forests. This study therefore focuses on illegal deforestation driven by agricultural expansion, and places it within the scope and scale of all tropical deforestation.

This report revisits Forest Trends’ 2014 report, by reassessing the extent of illegal agro-conversion across the tropics from 2013 to 2019, and finds a similar story: more forest land is being illegally cleared to make way for agricultural crops and pastures than ever before.

Washington, DC:Forest Trends, 2021. 81p.

By Daniel Mejía Pascual Restrepo

This paper proposes a new identification strategy to estimate the causal impact of illicit drug markets on violence using a panel of Colombian municipalities covering the period 1994-2008. Using a UNODC survey of Colombian rural households involved in coca cultivation, we estimate the determinants of land suitability for coca cultivation. With these results we create a suitability index that depends on the altitude, erosion, soil aptitude, and precipitation of a municipality. Our exogenous suitability index predicts the presence of coca crops cross sectionally and its expansion between 1994-2000. We show that following an increase in the demand for Colombian cocaine, coca cultivation increases disproportionately in municipalities with a high suitability index. This provides an exogenous source of variation in the extent of coca cultivation within municipalities that we use as an instrument to uncover the causal effect of illegal cocaine markets on violence. We find that a 10% increase in the value of coca cultivation in a municipality increases homicides by about 1.25%, forced displacement by about 3%, attacks by insurgent groups by about 2%, and incidents involving the explosion of land mines by about 1%. Our evidence is consistent with the view suggesting that prohibition creates rents for suppliers in illegal markets, and these rents cause violence as different armed groups fight each other, the government and the civil population for their control and extraction.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE , 2012. 56p.

By Chile Eboe-Osuji

Sexual violence is a particular brand of evil that women have endured—more than men—during armed conflicts, through the ages. It is a menace that has continued to challenge the conscience of humanity—especially in our times. At the international level, basic laws aimed at preventing it are not in short supply. What is needed is a more conscious determination to enforce existing laws. This book explores ways of doing just that; thereby shoring up international legal protection of women from sexual violence in armed conflicts.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. 374p.

By Mark Berry

Illegal drug trafficking and retail drug sales constitute the most common activity of organised crime groups in the UK and draw the largest share of resources from the police and prison services, whilst also generating considerable social costs. There are few contemporary studies in the UK on the supply of drugs, its organisation, culture and risk management practices, and even fewer on active dealers themselves. There remains limited ethnographic research into the drug trade, missing important insights that can be gained from observing distributors in a natural setting. A key absence in criminological literature is the voice of offenders who commit serious crimes and how they perceive and mitigate problems related to their activities. This research aims to fill gaps in the knowledge base by investigating the nature of the drug market, the crime risk management practices of drug dealers, and possible reasons for their involvement and patterns of activity. The study examines the criminal careers of offenders who operate in one of Britain’s largest cities, termed here anonymously as Red City. The participants in this study distribute and manufacture a range of illicit substances, both offline and online. They distribute drugs on local, national and international levels (retail, wholesale, import and export). To complement the fieldwork, interviews were conducted with official actors from the criminal justice system, the private sector and the third sector. The thesis seeks to provide a more nuanced and grounded picture of illicit drug dealing and ‘organised crime’, that provides an account that corrects popular stereotypes.

Cardiff, Wales: Cardiff University, 2020. 195p.

By Letizia Paoli

The main aim of this book is to reconstruct the culture, structure, and action of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta. Not only are these Italy’s most dangerous criminal organizations, but they have also profoundly influenced the mafia phenomenon in North America. It was from the Sicilian Cosa Nostra’s nineteenth-century forerunners that the Italian American mafia developed, as millions of Italian immigrants settled in the United States, most of them coming from southern Italy. Significantly, the largest and most influential Italian American mafia confederation is called Cosa Nostra as well. The Calabrian ’Ndrangheta also has offshoots in the Anglo-Saxon world. In the early twentieth century, ’Ndrangheta groups were established in both Canada and Australia, and these are still active now, maintaining close contacts with their Calabrian counterparts. In order to depict the culture, structure, and action of these organized crime groups, I consulted numerous sources, ranging from criminal cases to parliamentary hearings, from archival and other standard secondary sources to interviews with law enforcement officials, local politicians, and anti-mafia activists. The portrait given in this book, however, relies most heavily on the confessions and testimonies of former mafia members now cooperating with judicial authorities. As my introduction explains, these statements have not been accepted uncritically but have been taken seriously even when they seem to contradict the evil activities in which most mafiosi engage. Cooperating mafia witnesses are, in fact, the most direct source of information about the mafia, describing the mafia world not only from the outside but also—as one defector put it—from within.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

By Francesco Calderoni

Just a few months after the entry into force of the EU Framework Decision on the fight against organized crime, this book provides an unprecedented analysis of the national and European legislation on organized crime. The book provides a critical examination of the European policies and legal instruments to promote the harmonization and approximation of criminal law in this field (including the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime). The current level of harmonization among EU Member States and the approximation to the standards of the new Framework Decision are discussed in detail, with the help of tables, graphs and maps.The results highlight the problems surrounding the international legal instruments and the inconsistencies of the national approaches to combating organized crime.

Heidelberg; Dordrecht; London' New York: Springer, 2010. 201p.

Edited by Giovanni Fiandaca

The insightful essays in this book shine a new light on the roles of women within criminal networks, roles that in reality are often less traditional than researchers used to think. The book seeks to answer questions from a wide range of academic disciplines and traces the portrait of women tied to organized crime in Italy and around the world. The book offers up accounts of mafia women, and also tales of severe abuse and violence against women.

New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2007. 307p.

By Nick Tilley and Matt Hopkins with the assistance of Adam Edwards and John Burrows

Home Office Research Report 10 is the result of a victimisation survey that was conducted in three high crime neighbourhoods in English cities that aimed to establish patterns of organised crime victimisation and the extent to which businesses were invited to participate in organised crime.Local police and community representatives were also interviewed to gauge their views on organised crime and local businesses. The evidence collected suggests that the nature of organised crime in relation to business varies widely by high crime neighbourhood, that invitations to participate in organised crime are very widespread and that the police tend to perceive higher levels of crime organisation affecting businesses than those revealed through surveys.

London: Home Office, 2008. 66p.