By Anthony Morgan and Christopher Dowling

In this study we explore the enablers of illicit drug trafficking using law enforcement intelligence data on a sample of 587 organised crime groups. We measure the prevalence of other forms of criminal activity and their relationship with poly-drug trafficking, which refers to the trafficking of multiple drug types and is associated with increased profitability, versatility and resilience to disruption. Other forms of criminal activity— including enablers of illicit drug trafficking—were common. Half the groups (52%) were poly-drug traffickers. Groups suspected to have exploited or infiltrated the transport system (air, sea or surface) and those suspected of laundering money via the real estate market or gambling services were more likely to be trafficking multiple drug types. Groups that relied on these enabling activities were more likely to involve professional facilitators. This research highlights a number of key enablers of organised crime that may be targeted to disrupt illicit drug trafficking.

 Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 665.  Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2023. 19p.

by  Ronald Makanga Kakumba

Mob justice is a form of extrajudicial punishment or retribution in which a person suspected of wrongdoing is typically humiliated, beaten, and in many cases killed by vigilantes or a crowd. Mob action takes place in the absence of any form of fair trial in which the accused are given a chance to defend themselves; the mob simply takes the law into its own hands. Mob justice is not only criminal but also amounts to a violation of human rights. Over the past decade, Uganda has seen a significant rise in the number of cases of mob justice. According to the Uganda Police Force’s (2013-2019) annual crime reports, 746 deaths by mob action were reported and investigated in 2019, compared to 426 in 2013, a 75% increase. “Mob kills 42 in 7 weeks,” the Daily Monitor reported in March 2019, citing police figures – an average of six lynchings a week. Homicides by mob action in Uganda occur mainly in response to thefts, robberies, killings, and reports of witchcraft. According to the 2015 Afrobarometer survey in Uganda, one in six Ugandan adults said they took part in mob justice during the preceding year or would do so if they “had the chance.” This suggests that mob justice is not just a fringe problem in Uganda but commands attention and requires collective action. Why would a substantial number of Ugandans resort to taking the law into their own hands as an alternative form of “justice”? Analysts have pointed to a number of factors that might contribute to a willingness to engage in mob justice. One is a lack of trust in the formal criminal justice system to administer fair and timely justice. A 2005 study in Uganda showed that mob actions were often motivated by widespread suspicion or misunderstanding of the justice system, especially concerning the procedure of police bail, under which suspected culprits can be temporarily released before the court process. …Statistical analyses show that a lack of trust in the police is associated with a willingness to engage in mob justice, while perceived corruption undermines trust and thus indirectly contributes to a willingness to join others in mob actions. Further, our analysis finds that being a victim of crime (physical assault), encountering problems in the court system, finding it hard to obtain police assistance, and having to pay a bribe to police or court officials are factors that make people more likely to say they would take part in mob action against suspected criminals.

  Afrobarometer Policy Paper No. 70.   Afrobarometer 2020, 17p.  

By Theodoros Rakopoulos

From Clans to Co-ops explores the social, political, and economic relations that enable the constitution of cooperatives operating on land confiscated from mafiosi in Sicily, a project that the state hails as arguably the greatest symbolic victory over the mafia in Italian history. Rakopoulos’s ethnographic focus is on access to resources, divisions of labor, ideologies of community and food, and the material changes that cooperatives bring to people’s lives in terms of kinship, work and land management. The book contributes to broader debates about cooperativism, how labor might be salvaged from market fundamentalism, and to emergent discourses about the ‘human’ economy.

New York: Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books, 2018. 240p.

By  Lorenzo Rodrigo Aldeco Leo, Jose A. Jurado, Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez

  This document studies the effect of the homicide rate on internal migration in Mexico. Reduced form evidence shows that net migration of skilled workers decreases into local labor markets where homicide rates increased after 2007, suggesting workers prefer destinations with lower homicide rates. This result is due to lower inflows, without effects on outflows, pointing to the existence of moving costs. To quantify the welfare cost of increasing homicides, we use workers' migration decisions and a spatial equilibrium model. Skilled workers' average willingness to pay to decrease the homicide rate by 1% is estimated at 0.58% of wages. The welfare cost is in the order of several points of GDP per year, depending on the assumptions. Workers who do not migrate bear the largest share of the overall welfare cost

Working Paper, 2022: 11 Mexico City: Banco de México 2022. 53p.  

By Cecilia Farfán-Méndez , Romain Le Cour Grandmaison , Nathaniel Morris

Despite the well-documented human costs of the war on drugs, and the growing evidence of the environmental impacts of illicit economies, the militarized repression of the illicit drug trade remains a central hemispheric security and cooperation strategy in Northern and Central American countries. Through a multi-disciplinary dialogue that combines history, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science, this Special Issue critically interrogates why despite these failures the war on drug endures. Together, the contributors challenge explanations focused on state absence, weakening of the state, and ungoverned spaces and instead propose a research agenda that sheds light on the long-lasting, structural effects of the capitalistic integration of the region within the economy of illicit drugs. In particular, the Special Issue contributes to three existing and interconnected debates: First: the role of drug economies and illicitness on state formation, social inequalities, and development in Mexico and Central America. Second: the impact of illicit economies on local populations, and the connections between the licit and the illicit, margins and centers, and political orders and violence. Third: the variety of stakeholders that benefit from the war on drugs and that link the United States, Mexico, and Central America in licit and illicit fashions.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development 4(2):102-112, 2022

By Charles Fain Lehman

While most Americans have focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, the nation’s other great epidemic has continued to burn. Drug overdoses now claim the lives of over 100,000 Americans every year, a rate that appears likely to continue or grow for the foreseeable future. While the crisis once was concentrated predominantly in rural, white communities, the introduction of novel synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl, into the illicit drug supply has spread overdoses across urbanizations. Today, small-town and big-city leaders alike desperately need tools to fight back against the drug crisis. It can often seem as though drug policy is outside the ambit of local leaders, who lack the capacity to go after international traffickers or spend trillions of dollars on care. But local government, as the closest entity to the front lines of the crisis, plays a vital role in addressing it. This paper, therefore, explores options for local policymakers to respond to the drug crisis. In particular, it considers six frequently discussed local-scale policies: • Naloxone access and distribution • Investing in treatment capacity • Drug court programs • Wastewater tracking • Supervised consumption sites • Drug market interventions For each policy, this paper examines the evidence, offers estimates of costs, and provides caution where necessary. The overall goal is to give local policymakers a better understanding of what tools they have to more effectively tackle the other health crisis in their communities.  

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2022. 19p.

By Jonathan D. Rosen and  Hanna Samir Kassab 

  According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Americas is the most violent region in the world. The Americas has a homicide rate of 16.3 per 100,000 people, while Africa had a homicide rate of 12.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. Europe, Oceania, and Asia had much lower homicide rates with three percent, three percent, and 2.9 percent, respectively (see Fig.  1.1).1 The Americas is also home to the most violent country in the world. In 2015, El Salvador surpassed Honduras as the most violent non-waring nation. Violence has exceeded the days of the country’s civil war, which lasted for more than a decade. In fact, experts note that at one point in 2015 El Salvador had one murder per hour. Jonathan Watts writes, “Last Sunday was, briefly, the bloodiest day yet with 40 murders. But the record was beaten on Monday with 42 deaths, and surpassed again on Tuesday with 43. Even Iraq—with its civil war, suicide bombings, mortar attacks and US drone strikes—could not match such a lethal start to the week.”2 In January 2017, the country saw a rare phenomenon occur: one day without a murder.3 Much of the violence in El Salvador has been a result of gang-related activities as well as the consequences of the government’s tough on crime strategies.4 El Salvador’s neighbors, Guatemala and Honduras, have also seen high levels of gang-related violence.5 Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández argued that 80 percent of the homicides that occur in this country are related to organized crime.  

New York:London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 165p.

By Hernan Mondani and Amir Rostami

Outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have received increased attention from both law enforcement agencies and the research community. This study investigates the criminal collaboration patterns of two OMGs with a long history of hostilities. We use government data on individuals registered as belonging to Hells Angels MC, Bandidos MC and individuals with multiple OMG memberships, and suspicion data from 2011 to 2016 to build co-offending networks. Our results show that members of multiple OMGs tend to have higher centrality and clustering. These members also have the highest levels of suspicions per capita, and most of the co-offending is related to nexus links involving multiple membership individuals. They can be described as ‘criminal nomads’, collaborating with individuals from different organisations. Our results suggest that core members tend to engage in white-collar crime to a greater extent than those on the periphery, which tend to engage more in violence and drug crime.

GLOBAL CRIME                                               2022, VOL. 23, NO. 2, 193–215

By John Pitts

Drawing upon research undertaken by the present author in East, North West and South London and the work of other UK social scientists, this article considers the evidence concerning the involvement of young people of African-Caribbean origin and Mixed Heritage in street gangs and gang crime in London (For the sake of brevity, I will simply refer to these young people as Black, not least because this is how they usually define themselves). It outlines the sometimes acrimonious debate about the relationship between race, crime and street gangs in the United Kingdom in the past three decades, concluding that while many of the claims made about this relationship may be exaggerated or simply untrue, the evidence for the over-representation of Black young people in street gangs in London is compelling. The article then turns to the changing social and economic predicament of some Black young people in the capital since the 1980s and its relationship with their involvement in gang crime. Finally, it considers the role of drugs business in the proliferation of the gang form and ‘gangsta’ culture and the involvement of growing numbers of younger Black people in County Lines drug dealing.

Youth Justice, Volume 20, Issue 1-2, April-August 2020, Pages 146-158

By Meenakshi Fernandes and Lenka Jančová  

  Corruption, which can be defined as the 'abuse of entrusted power for private gain', poses a significant threat in the European Union. Corrupt practices can lead to a misuse of public funds and can contribute towards an erosion of democracy and the rule of law. The European Union can do more to tackle corruption and curb its negative impacts on society. This report draws on a quantitative analysis of corruption in the EU with a focus on three aspects: i) democracy and the rule of law; ii) public trust in institutions; and iii) public procurement. Further EU action to tackle corruption could strengthen trust in public institutions and enhance regulatory certainty. In quantitative terms, the social and economic gains could reach up to €58.5 billion per year.  

 Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service, 2023.  78p.

By Ilia Gaglio, Jacopo Guzzon, Katarina Bartz, Luca Marcolin, Rrap Kryeziu, Emma Disley, Jirka Taylor, Shann Hulme

The present study to strengthen the fight against corruption in the EU aims at providing recommendations for possible EU measures in the area of corruption prevention and repression and to assess and compare the impacts of the identified policy options. The core problems, drivers and issues of the EU anti-corruption acquis, the need for and added value of EU action and the relevant policy objectives were identified through detailed desk research and numerous consultation activities. Overall, the assessment pointed to legislative and operational barriers that hinder both the prevention and the fight against corruption in the EU. Main barriers include significant differences in terms of legislative and administrative arrangements in place at the national level to fight against corruption, as well as a lack of adequate data collection and monitoring of corruption data and trends that prevents sufficient prevention of corruption in the EU. …

Publications Office of the European Union, 2022. 193p.

Edited by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Jana Warkotsch

This last title in the series covers the most important findings of the five yearsEU sponsored ANTICORRP project dealing with corruption and organized crime.How prone to corruption are EU funds? Has EU managed to improve governance in the countries that it assists? Using the new index of public integrity and a variety of other tools created in the project this issue looks at how EU funds and norms affected old member states (like Spain), new member states (Slovakia,Romania), accession countries (Turkey) and the countries recipient of development funds (Egypt, Tanzania, Tunisia). The data covers over a decade of structural and development funds, and the findings show the challenges to changing governance across borders, the different paths that each country has experienced and suggest avenues of reforming development aid for improving governance.

Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2017. 128p.

Edited by Enrico Carloni, Diletta Paoletti  

The challenge of fighting corruption is strategic at a global and European level, and the inadequacy of the repressive and penal response alone has now been evidenced: corruption must not only be fought, but understood, and preventive administrative measures must be taken. Anti-corruption is not an issue that concerns only the judiciary branch, the legal system, and police authorities, but it is, above all, a challenge for society and institutions as a whole. And it is a challenge to be transformed, in particular, into a change in administrations and institutions, in their way of organizing and operating. This volume the result of the Project “Administrative Prevention through Targeted Anti-corruption MODels for candidate countries” – APTAMOD, co-funded by the European Union’s HERCULE III programme, which has conducted comparative law studies and high-profile research activities in the field of administrative prevention of corruption, with specific focus on Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2022.  178p.

Edited by Peter Larmour and Nick Wolanin 

There is new international attention being given to the old problem of corruption. It has been taken up by international organisations, and driven by economic analysis. It is impatient of cultural justifications, and suspicious of state action. It is concerned with corruption prevention as much as detection, investigation and prosecution. Corruption and Anti-Corruption deals with the international dimensions of corruption, including campaigns to recover the assets of former dictators, and the links between corruption, transnational and economic crime. It deals with corruption as an issue in political theory, and shows how it can be addressed in campaigns for human rights. It also presents case studies of reform efforts in the Philippines, India and Thailand. The book explains the doctrines of a well-established domestic anti-corruption agency. It is based on research to develop a curriculum for a unique international training course on ‘Corruption and Anti-Corruption’, designed and taught by academics at The Australian National University, the Australian Institute of Criminology and public servants in the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption. Versions have been taught in Canberra, and several countries in South East Asia.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2013.  286p.

By Federico Ceschel  · Alessandro Hinna  · Fabian Homberg

Corruption is widespread and preventive strategies to reduce corruption need to be adapted within the local context. Considering the United Nations (UN) Convention against corruption as our starting point, the paper presents a literature review based on 118 articles on corruption prevention initiatives in the public sector. The analysis indicates a substantial alignment between the guidelines deriving from the UN Convention, except for a lack of work on the risk-based approach to corruption prevention. Further, the review indicates problems with research designs. Based on the insights generated from the analysis, we develop an agenda for future research. 

Public Organization Review (2022) 22:571–591 

By Viktoriia Poltoratskaia and Mihály Fazekas  

  Our research on corruption risk assessments (CRAs) identifies three main approaches: centralised, decentralised, and transparency-oriented methodologies. Case studies from the Netherlands, Lithuania, Mexico, and Italy highlight the role of resource and institutional constraints in the choice of approach, and the importance of ensuring high-quality, complete, and accessible data. To ensure the mitigation of the identified risks, CRA should include systematic and explicit recommendations for assessed entities to follow up.   

  Oslo: U4 - Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), 2023. 43p.   

By Louis Favril

Background: Many people who enter prison have recently used drugs in the community, a substantial portion of whom will continue to do so while incarcerated. To date, little is known about what factors may contribute to the continuation of drug use during imprisonment. Methods: Self-reported data were collected from a random sample of 1326 adults (123 women) incarcerated across 15 prisons in Belgium. Multivariate regression was used to investigate associations between in-prison drug use and sociodemographic background, criminological profile, drug-related history, and mental health among participants who reported pre-prison drug use. Results: Of all 1326 participants, 719 (54%) used drugs in the 12 months prior to their incarceration and 462 (35%) did so while in prison. There was a strong association between drug use before and during imprisonment (OR = 6.77, 95% CI 5.16–8.89). Of those who recently used drugs in the community, half (52%) continued to do so while incarcerated. Factors independently associated with continuation (versus cessation) were young age, treatment history, polydrug use, and poor mental health. In a secondary analysis, initiation of drug use while in prison was further related to incarceration history and low education. Conclusion: Persistence of drug use following prison entry is common. People who continue to use drugs inside prison can be differentiated from those who discontinue in terms of drug-related history and mental health. Routine screening for drug use and psychiatric morbidity on admission to prison would allow for identifying unmet needs and initiating appropriate treatment. 

International Journal of Drug Policy Volume 115, May 2023, 104027

By Michael Friedrich and Sheila McCarthy

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York in March 2020, it forced drug courts across the state to hear cases remotely using teleservices, a practice that has continued. The pandemic also demonstrated that many daily drug court operations—appearances, case management, graduation ceremonies—could be conducted virtually. 

As part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP), this report details a three-year project to implement the Opioid Reduction Teleservices Program, conducted by the Center for Court Innovation, in partnership with the New York State Unified Court System and the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS). The goals were fourfold: (1) to expand access to evidence-based interventions at OASAS-licensed treatment facilities; (2) to establish secure video connections at the treatment facilities so that people in residential programs can appear remotely for court hearings and receive evidence-based judicial monitoring; (3) to remote link participants to medical professionals for evaluation and access to medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD); and (4) to educate the field about technology-based solutions to the opioid epidemic.

The report offers profiles of several project partners and discusses outcomes, lessons learned, measures toward sustainability, and recommendations for future COSSAP projects.

New York:  Center for Justice Innovation, 2022. 22p.

By Tom Sullivan and Alexandra Voce  

 This study explores how police detainees in Australia use mobile phones within the illicit drug market. Fifty-nine percent of respondents had used mobile phones to buy, deliver or supply drugs, mainly through phone calls, text messages or messaging apps. Detainees who had used apps for drug buying or supplying were on average significantly younger than those using other phone-based services for drug buying or supplying. Drug suppliers were significantly more likely than drug buyers to have used messaging apps. Respondents used messaging apps for convenience and to conceal their activities. Almost 50 percent of drug suppliers report having stopped using mobile phones because of law enforcement’s ability to intercept communications.

Statistical Bulletin 22.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2022. 11p.

Leonardo Castro-Gonzalez

The County Lines Model (CLM) is a relatively new illicit drugs distribution method found in Great Britain. The CLM has brought modern slavery and public health issues, while challenging the law-enforcement capacity to act, as coordination between different local police forces is necessary. Our objective is to understand the territorial logic behind the line operators when establishing a connection between two places. We use three different spatial models (gravity, radiation and retail models), as each one of them understands flow from place i to j in a different way. Using public data from the Metropolitan Police of London, we train and cross-validate the models to understand which of the different physical and socio-demographic variables are considered when establishing a connection. We analyse hospital admissions by drugs, disposable household income, police presence and knife crime events, in addition to the population of a particular place and the distance and travel times between two different locations. Our results show that knife crime events and hospital admissions by misuse of drugs are the most important variables. We also find that London operators distribute to the territory known as the ‘south’ of England, as negligible presence of them is observed outside of it.

 Soc. Open Sci.10: (3) 2023