By Alabama Appleseed

Every year from 2012-2020, Alabama ranked first in the nation for opioid prescriptions per capita. Since 2014, the opioid addiction has claimed the lives of nearly 7,000 Alabama residents who died by overdose, and disrupted the lives of countless more.

Since 2017, many state agencies have collaborated successfully via the Alabama Opioid Overdose and Addiction Council to chart a better path. The state has invested in treatment and peer specialists and reframed addiction as a public health issue, not a moral failing. For people who manage to steer clear of jails and prisons, things are starting to look up. 

But the combination of harsh criminal laws, the nation’s highest opioid prescription rate, and Alabama’s under-resourced jails and violent and dysfunctional prisons mean that many of the people who need treatment most are not getting it. Instead, they are dying preventable deaths in record numbers. Something must change.

Montgomery, AL: Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, 2022. 58p.

By Scott M. Deitche

From Chapter 1: To trace the start of traditional organized crime (the mob, the syndicate, the Mafia) in New Jersey, you could begin in a few cities around the state where new immigrant groups at the turn of the twentieth century fell victim to extortion gangs and police indifference. It was in these tight-knit immigrant neighborhoods where the strands and threads of organized-crime groups began. But if there was one focal point, one birthplace where originated the larger, more influential crime figures who would shape both the underworld and overall history of the state through much of the twentieth century, it would be Newark.

London. Rowman & Littlefield. 2018. 299p.

By Yvon Dandurand

This policy brief focuses on a small but especially vulnerable type of transportation business that has been prone to infiltration by organized crime groups through violence, intimidation and corruption: the vehicle-towing services industry. This type of criminal infiltration has been observed in different countries and it involves violent confrontation and competition for a share of the market. As such, this brief provides an opportunity for a comparison between patterns of infiltration and the use of violence by criminal organizations, as well as a review of law enforcement and policy responses  

Geneva: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 26p.

By Yvon Dandurand and Jessica Jahn

Success in addressing transnational organized crime hinges on multilateral cooperation. However, existing cooperation regimes are ineffective at countering the rapid changes in the organized crime landscape and countries increasingly tend to turn to national solutions. The diminishing support for multilateral cooperation means the international criminal justice system has become disjointed, insufficient and reactive. This paper sets out five possible scenarios that could affect the future of international criminal justice cooperation, and raises thought-provoking questions about possible outcomes and impacts on transnational organized crime. To be useful as planning tools, any scenario or vision of the future must be connectable to decisions in the present, and therefore the scenarios described here are presented in the framework of current challenges. It is hoped that civil society organizations will take the lead in formulating a comprehensive international criminal justice cooperation strategy, built on what works. Such a strategy should also supplemented with new ideas to address shortcomings and to facilitate effective reforms of the multilateral institutions needed to implement such a strategy.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 18p.

By Mark Freeman and Vanda Felbab-Brown

Negotiations with violent criminal groups – such as mafias, cartels, gangs and pirates – occur more often than imagined. This publication, grounded in more than three years of in-depth IFIT research and dozens of first-person interviews conducted with actual negotiators, offers key lessons drawn from the most diverse set of negotiations with violent criminal groups ever examined in one place. One of the prominent discoveries of this study – which centres on negotiations intended to reduce or end violence – is how the best of theory and practice regarding peace talks with militant groups (and associated areas such as transitional justice) appears largely absent from consideration or application in talks with violent criminal groups. The gap is striking and counterproductive, but also heralds an opportunity to achieve greater results in future. Another key discovery relates to the endgame of the negotiation. With militant groups, the point of negotiations is typically to end the use of organised political violence, by exchanging disarmament (and/or incorporation into the army) for some form of political empowerment and rehabilitation. With violent criminal groups, the endgame is harder to pin down, because their motivations are understood to be mainly pecuniary, leaving it unclear what they could transform into. However, the examined cases suggest that the challenge is surmountable – and under a surprising variety of conditions.

Barcelona, Spain: Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), 2021. 34p.

By Anna Sergi and Alice Rizzuti

By using open data and primary resources, previous and ongoing research, and the privileged partnerships with Eurojust Italian Desk and Operations and Europol, the Mafiaround-Europe report - stemming from the CRIME (Countering Regional Italian Mafia Expansion) project presents the first analysis of the presence of Italian mafias in 7 European countries in addition to Italy and the challenges of cross border policing of mafia-type organised crime. Production of the report, Mafiaround Europe, was enabled by funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, block awards made to research organisations to accelerate the impact of research. The report highlights how mafia-type activities have adapted to individual countries, their economy, culture, infrastructure and logistics networks.

Colchester, UK:  University of Essex, 2021. 258p.  

By  Colombian Organized Crime Observatory, Arlene B. Tickner, et al.

In Latin America, the participation of women in organized crime has been in the shadow of academic and public policy debate due to the male dominance in the different criminal economies and the tendency to see criminal activities as a “man’s activity”. However, a more detailed analysis of drug trafficking, human trafficking, and migrant smuggling, based on the application of a gender lens, allows the appreciation of the different roles that women play. After examining a series of documents, data and information collected through fieldwork, this investigation by the InSight Crime and Universidad del Rosario’s Colombian Observatory of Organized Crime, increases the complexity of female roles inside organized crime and questions the tendency to present women only as victims, or in some cases, as victimizers. From cooks and coca harvesters to owners of their drug empires or trafficking and smuggling networks, women operate in a versatile manner and move in a broad spectrum of roles, challenging the existent division of labor based on gender while at the same time coexisting with criminal organizations that continue to impose a patriarchal system. Through the description of these roles, the development of two case studies – one regarding women and gangs in El Salvador, and another tackling human trafficking and migrant smuggling in the Colombia-Venezuela border town of Cúcuta- and the construction of profiles of some of the greatest protagonists of organized crime in recent times, the investigation takes the shape of a woman. The document also analyses…..

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  the use of violence by women, a characteristic that is usually attributed to men and masculine behavior. However, violence is a tool often used by women in some organized crime structures. Based on this, as well as the examination of the main factors that push women to organized crime activities, a series of public policy recommendations are set forth for governments and local authorities. These are aimed at understanding a phenomenon that, aside from being under-analyzed, is continuously growing.   

Washington, DC: Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2020.   41p.

By Jenny Pearce

While Latin America’s high levels of chronic violence are mostly carried out by poor young men and mostly cost the lives of poor young men, the conditions for its reproduction are generated by logics of elite power and wealth accumulation. Drawing on more than 70 interviews with oligarchic elites from Colombia and Mexico, the paper offers propositions for further empirical research into these logics. It discusses why it makes sense to use the term “oligarchic elites” to analyse both the failure to invest in the rule of law and also the elite preference for a fragmented security state whose permeability facilitates influence trafficking. It studies the direct and indirect relationships between elites and varied forms of violence, exploring how they have affected the nature of the state in Latin America, the diffusion of criminal violences, and the emergence of micro criminal orders in many parts of the region. Latin America’s history of social action against violences – not least disappearances, feminicide, forced displacement, and state torture – should extend to de-sanctioning violence as a phenomenon. This could open up spaces for social and political participation to create the conditions of social justice which reduce violence.   

London:  LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre, 2018. 30p.

By Christopher Blattman, Gustavo Duncan, Benjamin Lessing and Santiago Tobón

Organised criminal activities, by their nature, are hard to measure. Administrative data are often missing, problematic, or misleading. Moreover, organised criminal activities are under-reported, and under-reporting rates may be greatest where gangs are strongest. Researchers hoping to quantify organised crime systematically face daunting challenges. Collecting information on organised crime is inherently a slow process of cautious trial and error. It will vary from city to city, and typically within a city as well. Dozens of qualitative and quantitative researchers have shown that this can be done with care, ethically, and with adequate protection for human subjects. What they all have in common is that they commit themselves to a place, and they all take their time. While there are risks, the benefits can be enormous. The information these investigators collect is often rare and invaluable. Officials and policymakers commonly have little insight into criminal organisations, with terrible consequences for policy, be it inaction, mediocrity, or adverse and unintended consequences. Here we draw on our experience in Colombia, Brazil, and Liberia of collecting systematic data on illicit activities and armed groups, in order to share our learning with other researchers or organisations that fund research in this area, who may find this useful for their own research. We address: first steps before asking questions, common challenges and solutions, and alternative sources. Our work thus far emphasises the relevance of deep qualitative work to identify local partners; the need for intense piloting of…..

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  survey instruments and a close oversight of survey firms, ranging from how they hire enumerators to how they plan and implement field work; the power of using survey experiments to mitigate and measure measurement error; and the relevance of cross-validating findings with complementary data sources.

Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham, 2022. 13p.

By INTERPOL and ENACT Africa

With the increase in Internet coverage, online trade of illicit goods is likely increasing on the African continent. In recent years, cyber-enabled crimes have increased on the African continent. This has been a result of a combination of factors, including, the improvement of Internet coverage, the wide availability of cyber-tools and the growing flexibility of cybercriminals. As a consequence, online crime nowadays represents a bigger security issue for law enforcement in African member countries than ever before. In this framework, INTERPOL, under the European Union funded ENACT Project, examines through this assessment the issue of cyber and cyber-enabled crimes in Africa in order to help drive a more strategic law enforcement response.

Lyon, France: INTERPOL; ENACT AFRICA, 2020. 79p.

By Len Engel, Erin Farley, and John Tilley

The drug overdose epidemic that swept through the United States over the past decade commanded the attention of public health providers, researchers, criminal justice practitioners, and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. Because of its severity and associated mortality rates, the epidemic became a priority among leaders across multiple sectors. As collaboration across these sectors matured, researchers and practitioners began to develop evidence-informed strategies to slow the spread of the epidemic. But the progress that was underway appears to have abruptly stopped when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and fundamentally altered many aspects of American life.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2020. 11p.

By Christopher Blattman, et al.  

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, scholars and journalists have spread anecdotes of gangs and criminal organizations coming to the aid of citizens, governing in place of the state. They report gang activities that range from enforcing lockdowns to providing goods and services to the poor and hungry. This is especially true in Latin America where thousands of gangs exert authority over civilians in large swaths of territory. Some argue that organized crime is stepping in where states have failed, seizing the chance to consolidate its position. But just how widespread is the kind of gang involvement that captures headlines? Are these anecdotes typical of how gangs are responding to COVID-19? Only systematic data can answer these questions and help assess whether the pandemic will ultimately strengthen organized crime’s grip on Latin American cities. We have spent four years studying criminal groups in Medellín, Colombia, a city with one of the highest concentrations of organized criminals in the world. If gangs respond to COVID-19 anywhere, it should be Medellín. Almost every low- and middle-income neighborhood in the city has a local gang that resolves disputes, polices the community, and often taxes businesses. As soon as the pandemic broke out, anecdotes about gang responses surfaced in Medellin. We set out to collect systematic data on gang and state governance before and during the pandemic. Despite the headlines, gang involvement in pandemic response is exceptional and mostly idiosyncratic. Surveying every low- and middle-income neighborhood in…..

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  Medellin, we find: ● Most welfare support to civilians came from state authorities rather than the gangs. ● Overall, state authorities played by far the largest role in enforcing quarantine rules. ● A small number of gangs, however, were highly involved in providing welfare and enforcing quarantine rules in their territories. ● These rare gang pandemic responses were relatively idiosyncratic. Whereas normal pre-pandemic gang rule is associated with a range of neighborhood characteristics, pandemic gang rule is not. Moreover, gang enforcement of pandemic lockdown or provision of services is almost uncorrelated with pre-pandemic levels of gang rule. We speculate that personal choices of the gangs and their leaders may have dominated in the first weeks of  COVID-19.

Chicago: Innovations for Poverty Action – The University of Chicago – Universidad EAFIT, 2020. 19p.

By John Kleinig, Peter Mameli, Seumas Miller, Douglas Salane and Adina Schwartz

This study is principally concerned with the ethical dimensions of identity management technology – electronic surveillance, the mining of personal data, and profiling – in the context of transnational crime and global terrorism. The ethical challenge at the heart of this study is to establish an acceptable and sustainable equilibrium between two central moral values in contemporary liberal democracies, namely, security and privacy. Both values are essential to individual liberty, but they come into conflict in times when civil order is threatened, as has been the case from late in the twentieth century, with the advent of global terrorism and trans-national crime. We seek to articulate legally sustainable, politically possible, and technologically feasible, global ethical standards for identity management technology and policies in liberal democracies in the contemporary global security context. Although the standards in question are to be understood as global ethical standards potentially to be adopted not only by the United States, but also by the European Union, India, Australasia, and other contemporary liberal democratic states, we take as our primary focus the tensions that have arisen between the United States and the European Union.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2011. 304p.

By Elisa-Sofía García-Marcano

In recent years, two apparently different and unconnected problems have received repeated attention from global news outlets, namely the opioid crisis and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The opioid crisis, which is especially catastrophic in the United States, involves the over-prescription and abuse of synthetic opioid painkillers such as oxycontin and fentanyl (Felter, 2020). The pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong involves legions of protesters, many of them university students, taking to the streets against what they see as the erosion of their civil liberties at the hands of the mainland Chinese government (Perper, 2019). How can these two issues possibly be connected? This paper tells the story of how the world's first great opioid crisis occurred in nineteenth-century China, and how the drug trafficking British thwarted the Chinese government's attempts to stop drug imports, fighting two wars in the process. Upon conclusion of the first of these wars, China was forced to cede the territory of Hong Kong. This British colonial outpost became the principal entrepôt for British opium entering the Chinese market. Over the next century and a half, Hong Kong grew into one of the world's most dynamic commercial cities, and its citizens enjoyed liberties under British rule that were not available to the mainland Chinese population. Thus, the legacy of the opium wars and the British opium trade to China is still very much with us today.

 Online Journal Mundo Asia Pacifico, 10(19), 98–109. 

By Liz McCulloch and Scarlett Furlong

In this report, Volteface aims to bridge the gap in understanding of how social media is being used as a marketplace for illicit drugs and the impact this is having on young people – social media’s primary user group. This report examines how prevalent this phenomenon is, which platforms are most likely to host this activity, what drugs are being advertised, how the platforms are being used, and what impact this is having on young people’s wellbeing, as well as the challenges facing social media regulators and law enforcement.   

London: Volteface, 2019. 87p.

By Mark Shaw

Drug seizures are widely referred to in the media and academic reporting on drug trafficking and organised crime. Everyone knows their limitations. But what if seizures represent the exact opposite of what we generally think them to be? That is, not a reflection of state efficiency, but rather cracks in systems of political protection. If that is the case, they may appear more regularly at some times rather than others. A detailed study of West African cocaine seizures in the context of periods of political instability over a twenty-year period suggest this association is worth exploring.

ENACT (Africa), 2021. 23p.

By  Mathew H. Charles

Ecuador’s coastline has become a key despatch point for international drug traffickers exporting cocaine that has been produced in Colombia and Peru. As a result, Ecuador, and its port city of Guayaquil in particular, have become the latest epicentre of the world’s drug violence as local gangs battle for supremacy to impress international traffickers and assume a larger share of the country’s lucrative cocaine industry. Key points • The Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) cartels from Mexico use maritime routes and a network of “go-fast” vessels (GFVs) and fishing boats to ship cocaine to Central America and the USA. • International traffickers, including Albanian gangs and other criminal structures from the Balkans, contaminate international shipping at the port of Guayaquil in Guayas to ship cocaine to Europe. • In 2021, the police say they seized a record 210 tonnes of cocaine in Guayaquil, up from 128 tonnes in 2020. • In 2021, the province of Esmeraldas registered its highest murder count for seven years with a total of 79 homicides. In the first 8 months of 2022, the number has increased to 304. • In the city of Guayaquil, the homicide rate has doubled to 34.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in the past 12 months, making it one of the world’s most dangerous cities.   

University of Rosario, Observatorio Colombiano de Crimen Organizado (OCCO), 2022. 5p.

By UNODC and EUROPOL

The cocaine market presents a clear threat at global level. Well-defined locations of production in South America and large consumer markets in the Americas and Europe lead to trafficking routes from a circumscribed origin to specific, even if far-flung, destinations. While some parts of the world play a crucial role as transit regions, the routes, modalities and networks employed by criminal actors continue to evolve, diversify and become more efficient. The increasingly globalized, interconnected, digitalized and technologically sophisticated nature of society, as well as a growing affluent demographic in some regions where cocaine use has traditionally been low, can potentially catalyse and accelerate the dynamism and expansion of the market. 

Vienna: UNODC and EUROPOL, 2021. 28p.

By Timothy J. Moore & Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

Large and rapid upswings in illicit drug use display similar properties to infectious disease epidemics. In this chapter, we review research to understand what causes drug epidemics and how they end. Drug market actors are subject to both positive and negative reinforcement that lead to rapid, nonlinear increases and decreases in drug market activity. There is evidence that drug epidemics cause serious problems, including drug overdoses, adverse birth outcomes, homicides, lower educational attainment, and migration from neighborhoods subject to intense drug market activity. Many of these costs are borne by those who do not consume or sell drugs. Given the frequency, size, and impacts of illicit drug epidemics, they deserve more attention by researchers and policy-makers.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021.  53p.

By Diana S. Kim

"Though today opiates are highly controlled substances and generally viewed as menaces to society, the opium trade was once licit and profitable, both for merchants and for the governments to which they paid taxes. During the late nineteenth century, British and French colonies in Southeast Asia drew up to fifty percent of their revenue from taxes on opium consumption. Given its profitability and European rulers' strenuous defence of opium as an integral part of managing an empire, how did both attitudes toward and laws about opium shift so dramatically by the mid-twentieth century? This book argues against the conventional understanding that opium prohibition was enacted as part of a wave of liberal humanitarianism or because doctors awoke to its dangers to users' wellbeing, and instead offers a more complex story. In examining the opium's fall from grace throughout British and French colonies in Southeast Asia from the 1860s to the 1940s, Diana Kim combines extensive archival research with her training in political science. This book reveals the key role minor colonial administrators played in the abolition process. Local administrators were players in intellectual debates and decision-making processes concerning opium, and the knowledge they produced-their records and observations-influenced the empire's revenue policies. The author's analysis of these processes challenges notions that states implement policies based on maximizing their revenue. By observing how opium prohibition was implemented differently and at different times across the region, Kim argues against the idea that the push for prohibition came from the metropole. Further, she reflects on the lasting legacies of prohibition and the implications for present-day politics and public regulation of vice crimes and illicit markets, making a statement about how vice is defined and how its regulation affects processes of state formation, colonial and otherwise"

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  region, Kim argues against the idea that the push for prohibition came from the metropole. Further, she reflects on the lasting legacies of prohibition and the implications for present-day politics and public regulation of vice crimes and illicit markets, making a statement about how vice is defined and how its regulation affects processes of state formation, colonial and otherwise”

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. 336p.