A Security Paradox. The Influence Of Governance-Type Organized Crime Over the Surrounding Criminal Environment

Abstract

This study empirically demonstrates how governance-type organized crime groups (OCGs) operate as an enforcer against volume crimes in the communities they control and argues that their ability to mitigate volume crimes forms an integral component of controlling their territory in the long term. This is because the costs incurred from deterring other crimes are offset by the tangible and intangible revenues that it facilitates. Indeed, combating volume crimes fosters an environment in which OCGs can conduct their activities unfettered by other criminals and law enforcement agencies, safeguard those businesses that pay them protection and curry favour amongst the population. Consequently, the present study verifies the validity of the security governance paradigm by conducting an econometric analysis of 11 different volume crimes.

Gobernanzas criminales

“…El uso del concepto de gobernanza para caracterizar el alcance del control e imposición de normas y restricciones por parte de grupos criminales sobre determinado territorio asume la existencia de duopolios que materializan relaciones de convivencia o incluso connivencia entre las organizaciones ilegales y el Estado (Aziani et al, 2020;Lessing, 2021). Este fenómeno es especialmente relevante en América Latina, donde varios países se enfrentan a una suerte de regímenes de soberanías compartidas entre Estado y grupos criminales (Feldmann & Luna, 2022).…”

COVID-19 and Organized Crime: Strategies employed by criminal groups to increase their profits and power in the first months of the pandemic

“…These OCGs do not merely exploit the weaknesses of states; instead, by enacting or performing state-like activities and privatizing the provision of services, they also acquire a political component (Arias 2006;Gambetta 1993). Most powerful Mexican drug-trafficking organizations, Neapolitan Camorra, as well as structured criminal organizations in Brazil, Colombian, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom, also exert control over their territories, albeit to a lesser extent and with limited governance capability (Arias 2006;Aziani et al 2020a;Brophy 2008;Campana and Varese 2018;Cruz 2010;Reuter and Paoli 2020).…”