Why Organized Crime Seeks New Criminal Markets

Albanese, Jay S.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-46327-4_2

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…In all cases, the relative deprivation in socioeconomic standards and livelihood alternatives creates vulnerable populations that are easily exploited by ISN actors. This observation is consistent with theories of criminogenic asymmetries in which economic, cultural, and regulatory inequalities arising from globalization are generators of illegal flows (e.g., Albanese 2020;Passas 1999). Synthesizing these research threads with our proposed comparative framework can add spatial specificity to analyses of criminogenic asymmetries as conditions necessary for ISN emergence and link those conditions to ISN structure and modus operandi, characteristics of the commodity, and spatial dynamics throughout all phases of the supply network.…”

Section: Conclusion and Future Research Directionssupporting

confidence: 82%

Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand

Magliocca

Torres

Margulies

et al. 2021

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

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Illicit supply networks (ISNs) are composed of coordinated human actors that source, transit, and distribute illicitly traded goods to consumers, while also creating widespread social and environmental harms. Despite growing documentation of ISNs and their impacts, efforts to understand and disrupt ISNs remain insufficient due to the persistent lack of knowledge connecting a given ISN's modus operandi and its patterns of activity in space and time. The core challenge is that the data and knowledge needed to integrate it remain fragmented and/or compartmentalized across disciplines, research groups, and agencies tasked with understanding or monitoring one or a few specific ISNs. One path forward is to conduct comparative analyses of multiple diverse ISNs. We present and apply a conceptual framework for linking ISN modus operandi to spatial-temporal dynamics and patterns of activity. We demonstrate this through a comparative analysis of three ISNs -cocaine, illegally traded wildlife, and illegally mined sand -which range from well-established to emergent, global to domestic in geographic scope, and fully illicit to de facto legal. The proposed framework revealed consistent traits related to geographic price structure, value capture at different supply chain stages, and key differences among ISN structure and operation related to commodity characteristics and their relative illicitness. Despite the diversity of commodities and ISN attributes compared, social and environmental harms inflicted by the illicit activity consistently become more widespread with increasing law enforcement disruption. Drawing on these lessons from diverse ISNs, which varied in their histories and current sophistication, possible changes in the structure and function of nascent and/or low salience ISNs may be anticipated if future conditions or law enforcement pressure change.

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Section: Conclusion and Future Research Directionssupporting

confidence: 82%

Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand

Magliocca

Torres

Margulies

et al. 2021

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

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Setting a Gold Standard: Review of Yuliya Zabyelina and Daan van Uhm’s (2020) Illegal Mining: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Ecocide in a Resource-Scarce World. Palgrave Macmillan

Gacek

2021

Int Criminol

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Criminal organizations exhibit hysteresis, resilience, and robustness by balancing security and efficiency

van Elteren,

Vasconcelos,

Lees

2024

Sci Rep

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The interplay between (criminal) organizations and (law enforcement) disruption strategies is critical in criminology and social network analysis. Like legitimate businesses, criminal enterprises thrive by fulfilling specific demands and navigating their unique challenges, including balancing operational visibility and security. This study aims at comprehending criminal networks’ internal dynamics, resilience to law enforcement interventions, and robustness to changes in external conditions. Using a model based on evolutionary game theory, we analyze these networks as collaborative assemblies of roles, considering expected costs, potential benefits, and the certainty of expected outcomes. Here, we show that criminal organizations exhibit strong hysteresis effects, with increased resilience and robustness once established, challenging the effectiveness of traditional law enforcement strategies focused on deterrence through increased punishment. The hysteresis effect defines optimal thresholds for the formation or dissolution of criminal organisation. Our findings indicate that interventions of similar magnitude can lead to vastly different outcomes depending on the existing state of criminality. This result suggests that the relationship between stricter punishment and its deterrent effect on organized crime is complex and sometimes non-linear. Furthermore, we demonstrate that network structure, specifically interconnectedness (link density) and assortativity of specialized skills, significantly influences the formation and stability of criminal organizations, underscoring the importance of considering social connections and the accessibility of roles in combating organized crime. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the systemic nature of criminal behavior from an evolutionary perspective and highlight the need for adaptive, strategic approaches in policy-making and law enforcement to disrupt criminal networks effectively.

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Why Organized Crime Seeks New Criminal Markets

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand

Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand

Setting a Gold Standard: Review of Yuliya Zabyelina and Daan van Uhm’s (2020) Illegal Mining: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Ecocide in a Resource-Scarce World. Palgrave Macmillan

Criminal organizations exhibit hysteresis, resilience, and robustness by balancing security and efficiency

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