An introduction to the special issue on ‘counterfeiting’

This paper provides an introduction to the articles and report excerpts included in the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime on ‘Counterfeiting’. The aim of this special issue is to add to the relatively sparse literature currently available that addresses this expansive and complex criminological phenomenon. In particular, the special issue draws together empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on the organization of the counterfeit trade across a broad spectrum of goods, and highlights a number of issues associated with researching counterfeiting.     

Asterix and Obelix in Drugland: an introduction to the special issue on ‘drug markets’

This paper provides an introduction to the articles bringing forward empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on drug markets, raising questions about the nature of the relationship between the organization of drug markets and the official frameworks surrounding them, and, importantly, about the complexity of this relationship.     

An introduction to the special issue on ‘Organised crime and illegal markets in the UK and Ireland’

This paper provides an introduction to the articles and report excerpt submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime on ‘Organised crime and illegal markets in the UK and Ireland’. The aim of the special issue is to draw together empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on various manifestations of organised crime in the particular geographic context(s), the evolution of organised crime, the links between organised crime, the legal sphere and paramilitary groups, as well as an account of the demographic profile and attitudes of citizens in areas in which organised crime groups thrive.     

The Russian Far East’s illegal timber trade: an organized crime?

Transnational environmental crime is a global problem encompassing not only criminal violations of the law, but harms against the environment and the people reliant upon it as a natural resource. Grounded in the green criminological theory of eco-global criminology, this paper explores the transnational environmental crime of the illegal timber trade in the Russian Far East unpicking the threats to ecological well-being and the global nature and impacts of this crime. In researching transnational environmental crime, it is crucial to uncover the distinct local and regional variations of the forces at play; for this paper that means analyzing the role of organized crime and corruption in Russia’s timber black market. This information was obtained by using the current literature and interviews with Russian and international experts in order to uncover the role of these actors in the harvesting, smuggling and selling of timber. From this exploration, a structure of the illegal timber trade in this region is proposed including at which points along the black market chain organized crime and/or corruption are involved. Additionally, from an eco-global criminological foundation this paper analyzes the consequences to Russia’s people, its environment and the global community if the illegal timber trade is to continue in its current state.     

From West Africa to the Balkans: exploring women’s roles in transnational organized crime

There is a lack of reliable data on the role of women in transnational organized crime. So far, the focus of this research has overwhelmingly been on the Italian Mafia. Little is known about women’s roles in other types of organized crime activities. Since there is an ongoing perception that draws on stereotypical imagery of women in organized crime as appendixes to their male counterparts, this article explores whether women are indeed as oppressed in transnational organized crime as they are in other spheres of life. It focuses on the stereotypical constructions of femininity (victims) and masculinity (criminals) and argues that hegemonic gender roles are defined by the dominant European/American culture. The article takes a multicultural feminist approach and studies female criminality in the context of “doing gender,” an approach that assumes that the feminine gender role is something that must be accomplished in the context of specific situations. By studying the roles of women from West Africa and the Balkans in transnational criminal activities, it specifically examines how time and space, as well history and culture, contribute to one’s position in a criminal network.     

‘Endemic to the species’: ordering the ‘other’ via organised crime

The United States has been the prime mover in the establishment of both the concept of organised crime and the use of the concept in its attempt to establish global hegemony, in which law enforcement became a little more than a front for a government-backed central casting agency, stereotyping both heroes and villains. This article offers an account of how the ‘Other’ has been used as prism for the construction of organised crime primarily in the United States and how this construction, as a franchise, has been exported on the international level and on heterogeneous criminal landscapes.     

The appeal of ‘dangerous’ men. On the role of women in organized crime

Women living at the edge of poverty often find themselves attracted to ‘dangerous’ men. Many of these women find themselves uncontrollably drawn to men who have made a career in crime. Curaçao women living with men involved in the drug economy in the Netherlands or on the island of Curaçao are no exception to this rule. The fact that these women are attracted to this kind of man often leads to an environment where boys are raised to become ‘dangerous’ sons. Once grown up, these boys will in turn attract female contemporaries who exist at the margins of society. This article attempts to explain how this vicious circle can be broken.     

Not biting the dust: using a tripartite model of organized crime to examine India’s Sand Mafia

India’s Sand Mafia, which illegally mines sand for construction, generates approximately USD 17 million per month in revenues. Despite the devastating environmental, physical, and economical harms caused, there is a dearth of criminological research on this organized crime group. This paper develops a tripartite model of organized crime that is used to explore the Sand Mafia’s modus operandi, modus vivendi, and modus coordināti. It conducts document analysis of 75 media and environmental documents published between 2010 and 2015. This group operates as numerous, fragmented structures with transient memberships, and uses violence, political affiliation, and regenerative properties to ensure continued operation. Other factors, such as inadequate manpower, poor enforcement, rapid economic development, and limited acceptance of alternatives to sand, collectively compound the problem of illicit sand mining. Recommendations for alleviating the problem, such as imposing stricter regulations, implementing an independent regulatory body, and empowering local residents, are also examined. Future lines of research inquiry, such as conducting harms analysis via multidisciplinary research, are also offered.     

``Wanted: Mafia boss' – Essay on the personology of organized crime

Despite an abundance of mafia romaticism both in litarary form and in social science the psychological study of personality of prominent organized crime figures is almost completely absent. Criminological attempts to understand how the mafia kingpin's mind works have failed so far because they are based on the mistaken view that underworld leadership would not require a certain level of skills and knowledge. Thus I have constructed a theoretical portrait of a maffia boss using the Five Factor Personalityy Model thatt is also used for personal selection purposes. I then suggest that personality traits that predict leadership success in the legitimate business world such as extraversion, controlled impulsiveness, a sense of adventure, megalomania, annd Narcissistic Personality Disorder, are all equally suitable triats for a career in organized crime.     

From Apalachin to the Buffalo Project: Obstacles on the path to effective federal responses to organized crime, 1957–1967

The Apalachin meeting of recognized underworld leaders from cities across the USA was held in upstate New York on November 14, 1957. The event, well known to historians and justice system officials, has become a textbook case rarely examined for its larger context of how American government officials learned to confront the organization and strength of the American Mafia, later called La Cosa Nostra (LCN). From 1957 to 1967, three presidents, four attorneys general, and hundreds of federal agents and prosecutors traveled an obstacle-filled path toward investigating, indicting, prosecuting, and convicting Apalachin attendees and their successors. Steps were taken to challenge the power of the mob during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, but they were consistently plagued by false starts, frustrations, and side steps. Each obstacle further instructed policy makers, however, on the need for an intensive and coordinated effort grounded in common goals and interagency cooperation. This article considers six key obstacles to the decade-long quest for a concerted federal initiative against organized crime. It examines how the characteristics and the impact of each obstacle contributed to a meandering and slothful federal response to the Mafia’s power. Lessons learned about how to effectively attack the mob were finally implemented in May 1966 when President Johnson institutionalized Executive agency cooperation, making the Attorney General (AG) the focal point in the war on organized crime. One element in this new initiative was known as the ‘Buffalo Project,’ an experiment commencing officially in January 1967 in Buffalo, New York to concentrate intelligence, investigations, and prosecutive resources working across bureaucratic lines to pursue guilty pleas or convictions. The Project, a closely supervised operation directed by the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS), was conceptualized as a small team of supervisory federal investigators and experienced prosecutors who built cases against local Mafia associates and leaders to withstand the scrutiny of the federal justice system. Assistance was also rendered by state, local, and international organizations. The Project formed a template for the DoJ Criminal Division’s Strike Force program.

Editorial introduction to the China–EU Law Journal special issue on the EU–China Investment Treaty in Interdisciplinary Perspective

China-EU Law Journal -     

Science, values and politics: an insider’s reflections on corporate crime research

Diverse social and political forces have long shaped research on corporate crime and its social control in the U.S., and they have responded to this work in plural and contradictory ways. These forces range from the abstract and institutional to the local and personal. In this essay, I reflect on my three decades of research experience in this arena in an examination of these forces and their implications for research and public policy. More overtly than other forms of criminological research, the study of corporate lawbreaking has conjoined issues of values and politics with issues of science. This feature of the work has made consistently problematic such foundational questions as how to define the subject of inquiry, how to study it, and how to communicate about it. While this volatility has contributed to the ongoing marginalization of this research stream in both academic criminology and regulatory policy, it has also created a certain intellectual dynamism that should attract future generations of investigators to these questions, and to greater cross-disciplinary efforts to address them. Such developments may even pave the way to greater consideration of such research by policy-makers, should socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. and around the world raise the public salience of corporate wrongdoing. ‘Why do you want to study corporate managers? We know how they think.’ ‘…a book entitled Corporate Crime automatically puts us on guard to defend the corporations…such a book should never have been written in the first place.’      

The Critic’s Love of The Law: Intimate Observations on an Insular Jurisdiction

This article, which should not in any sense be taken to reflect the views of the Editorial Board of Law and Critique, argues that the political project of critical legal studies in England remains overwhelmingly in the future. Lacking academic identity, political purpose and ethical conviction, critical legal scholarship in England has been too insecure in its institutional place and too unconscious of its individual and collective desires to resist absorption into the institution. Critical legal studies – as distinct from feminist legal studies, gay and lesbian studies or critical race theory –has tended to teach and so reproduce the core curriculum in a passive and negative mode. Resistant, ostensibly for historical and political reasons, to self-criticism and indeed to self-reflection upon their institutional practices, critical scholars have ended up repeating the law that they came to critique and overcome. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Effects of an Alibi Witness’s Relationship to the Defendant on Mock Jurors’ Judgments

Two studies tested the impact of an alibi witness’s relationship to a defendant on the perceived credibility of that witness. In the first study, 291 mock jurors estimated the frequency with which individuals would invent alibis, the frequency they themselves would do so, and the frequency of interpersonal contact among individuals of varying relationships. The degree of relationship between an alibi witness and a defendant remained a predictor of witness credibility when contact frequency was controlled. In the second study, 512 mock jurors were randomly assigned to case scenarios. Skepticism toward witnesses who are biologically or affinally related to a defendant was greater than skepticism toward a socially linked witness. Both studies supported predications from kinship theory and reciprocal altruism.     

The ‘Perils’ of an Identity Politics Approach to the Legal Recognition of Harm

In the past, and it still remains the case, people with learning difficulties who are victims of violence have been cast as being in need of protection rather than rights and justice. Such an approach belies an institutionalised perspective of harm that does not readily engage with criminal justice structures or solutions. At the same time, Sect. 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 gives the court the power to pass enhanced sentences where it can be proven that a crime was motivated by hostility towards someone because s/he is disabled. However, this provision may simply remain a symbolic pledge to equality that fails to tackle the complex and deep rooted causes of violence and oppression in modern society. The consequences of automatically turning to hate crime ‘solutions’ have yet to be explored. This article will draw from the ideas of a number of thinkers in the context of diverse activism to construct a bridge between current debates about how to theorise and tackle violence and oppression in the modern world and the campaigns fought by people with learning difficulties and their supporters. The hope is that this exercise will not only help people with learning difficulties to access the current debate but will further develop current thinking about how to understand and tackle violence in the modern world.

Australian post-separation parenting on the smartphone: What’s ‘App-ening?

In recent years Australia has seen increasing use of digital technology including smartphones and with that, increasing development and availability of online family law resources including digital applications (‘apps’). However, the extent to which online resources are being used – and are considered useful – by those experiencing relationship separation has not so far been the focus of Australian empirical research. After first briefly examining digital developments in Australia more broadly, we draw on recent data from 35 separated parents across four states to explore use and utility of family law resources available on smartphones from a ‘consumer’ perspective, focusing on apps. Our analysis suggests a gap between what is available, and what is known about and used by separating parents.