Agricultural drug economies: cause or alternative to intra-state conflicts?

Through case studies selected among the world’s main drug-producer countries and regions (Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Morocco, Peru, and West Africa) this paper depicts the global scene in order to improve understanding of how agricultural illicit drug economies may foster the emergence of intra-state conflicts, help prolong intra-state conflicts or, conversely, prevent some crises. The paper thereby examines the complex connections between agricultural illicit drug production and intra-state conflict in the all-important context of underdevelopment and globalisation. Because it is illegal, drug production may affect international security, above all through the armed violence it creates and the uses to which resulting profits are put (financing of armed groups and criminal organisations, and even – as has been recently though mostly erroneously claimed – terrorist organisations [4, 5]. However, it is important to avoid restricting the question of drug production to security issues, and instead to examine the phenomenon overall in an analysis encompassing everything from the causes of the recourse to an illegal drug economy to the effects of official responses. Through case studies selected from the main regions of illegal agricultural drug production (Afghanistan, West Africa, Burma (Myanmar), Bolivia, Colombia, Morocco and Peru) this paper aims at improving our understanding of how such production might foster the emergence of conflicts, ease their prolongation or, conversely, prevent crises in certain situations. These three questions require examining the connections between the agricultural economy of illegal drugs and conflict in the all-important context of underdevelopment and of globalisation.     

Youth Gangs — A Special Problem

Beginning in the mid-1980s, some youth gangs with origins in the large urban centers of Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, and New York, became major criminal entrepreneurs in the supply of illicit drugs. In a very short time, many of these gangs have developed intrastate and interstate networks for the purpose of expanding their highly profitable participation in the state, regional, and national illegal drug sales market. Significant levels of violence and related criminal behavior have accompanied this phenomenon. Youth have always been distributors and sellers of drugs within their local peer groups, whether these groups were informal or organized as “gangs.” Most youth who are involved with illicit drugs have not had direct contact with drug dealers. Their street, school, or neighborhood suppliers have been friends and acquaintances. The onset of domestically-produced drugs or drug compounds presented an opportunity for youth to be in control of the supply. Domestically grown marijuana represented such an opportunity. Clandestine laboratory-produced methamphetamine and PCP increased it. And, finally, domestically-manufactured “crack” or “rock” cocaine opened the floodgates for serious youth participation in the huge profits available through illicit drug trafficking.     

INFORMAL CONTROL AND ILLICIT DRUG TRADE*

Antidrug legislation and enforcement are meant to reduce the trade in illegal drugs by increasing their price. Yet the unintended consequence is an increase in informal control—including retaliation, negotiation, avoidance, and toleration—among drug users and dealers. Little existing theory or research has explored the connections between informal control and drug trading. This article uses the rational choice and opportunity perspectives to explore the question: How and why does the frequency and seriousness of popular justice—as a whole or for each form—affect the price and rate of drug sales? The proposed theory is grounded on and illustrated with qualitative data obtained from drug dealers. This article concludes by discussing the scholarly and policy implications.     

Understanding parrot trafficking between illicit markets in Bolivia: an application of the CRAVED model

The CRAVED model has been used to understand theft variation in a whole host of hot products, including wildlife. Past research, however, has only applied the model at either the theft or illicit market stage to understand why particular products are stolen in high numbers. The CRAVED model has yet to be applied to the trafficking stage of hot products smuggled between illicit markets and, therefore, its applicability at this particular stage remains unknown. Using secondary data from the Los Pozos wildlife market in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, this study applies the CRAVED model to explain why parrot species are trafficked between illicit markets in Bolivia. This research finds that species that are more “available” and less “valuable” are more likely to be trafficked between illicit markets, suggesting that variation at the trafficking stage of the parrot trade can be explained by nearly the same CRAVED concepts as they do at the poaching stage. This study also finds that one-quarter of parrots in the Los Pozos market are trafficked to other cities, of which 99% are to the city of Cochabamba. These findings suggest that shutting down illicit markets and patrolling major roadways between cities can substantially reduce the illegal parrot trade.     

Broken Hearts and Battered Lives: Adverse and Abusive Life Histories and Externalized Responses to Anger as Pathways to Illicit Drug Use Among Incarcerated Women

Most incarcerated women suffer from adverse and abusive life histories, including adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as sexual, physical, emotional abuse, and neglect, and intimate partner violence (IPV). In addition, many have difficulties regulating their anger expression and most participate in illicit drug use. Although many have offered explanations for these relationships, the current study is among the first to utilize an integrated feminist pathways and general strain theory (GST) approach to explain them. Using data from a stratified random sample of all incarcerated women in Oklahoma (N?=?441), we explore the linkages between ACEs, IPV, the externalized expression of anger, and heavy illicit drug use. Our findings indicate that childhood physical and sexual abuse are significantly associated with externalized responses to anger. However, the effects of childhood adversities, particularly sexual abuse, on heavy illicit drug use are mediated by externalized responses to anger suggesting that anger plays a significant role in women’s pathways to illicit drug use. In contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, being a victim of IPV was negatively related to externalized responses to anger and not significantly related to illicit drug use. Implications for the importance of utilizing an integrated feminist pathways and GST approach in future research are offered.     

The globalised network of a dirty game: match-fixing,illegal betting and transnational organised crime in Italian football

This paper examines the role of illicit networks and transnational crime organisations in fostering match-fixing and illegal betting in the globalised world. The goal is to identify the characteristics of these illicit phenomena and their basic structures and functions. Social network analysis was conducted to explore the scandal known as Calcioscommesse that came to light in Italy between 2011 and 2013. Attention is focused on brokers and crime syndicates that operate in Italian football, with the objective of comprehending their relations, functions and balances of power; this research clarifies the roles of the collective and individual actors in transnationally promoting match-fixing and illegal betting.     

Bruised Inside Out: The Adverse and Abusive Life Histories of Incarcerated Women as Pathways to PTSD and Illicit Drug Use

The majority of incarcerated women who suffer from diverse traumatic life histories including abusive home lives and intimate partner violence (IPV), develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struggle with heavy illicit drug use. While many have offered examinations of these relationships, the current study is among the first to utilize an integrated feminist pathways and general strain theory (GST) approach to explain them. Using data from a stratified random sample of all incarcerated women in Oklahoma (N = 334), we explore the links between, adverse childhood experiences, including physical, sexual, emotional, and childhood neglect, IPV, PTSD, and heavy illicit drug use. Our findings indicate that the effects of IPV on heavy illicit drug use are mediated by PTSD symptoms suggesting that PTSD plays a significant role in the pathway to illicit drug use among Oklahoma women prisoners. Implications for the importance of utilizing an integrated feminist pathways and GST approach in future research are offered.     

Evaluation of genetic markers for the analysis of THC levels of Cannabis sativa samples using principal component analysis – A preliminary study

Cannabis sativa is a worldwide commercial plant used for medicinal purposes, food and fiber production, and also as a recreational drug. Therefore, the identification and differentiation between legal and illegal C. sativa is of great importance for forensic investigations. In this study, principal component analysis (PCA), an exploratory data analysis technique, was tested to correlate the specific genotype with the concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the samples. C. sativa samples were obtained from legal growers in Piedmont, Italy, and from illegal drug seizures in the Turin region. DNA was extracted, quantified, amplified with a 13-loci multiplex STR and finally analyzed with an automated sequencer. The results showed a trend in the analyzed samples as they differed by their THC content and allele profiles. PCA yielded two clusters of samples that differed by specific allele profiles and THC concentrations. Further validation studies are needed, but this study could provide a new approach to forensic investigation and be a valuable aid to law enforcement in significant marijuana seizures or in tracing illicit drug trafficking routes.     

Debts and Threats: Managing Inability to Repay Credits in Illicit Drug Distribution

This study examines how creditors in illicit drug markets manage debtors’ inability to repay “fronted” drugs. Based on qualitative interviews with 40 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore four outcomes of unpaid drug debts. Two modes of governance dominated the credit reciprocation processes: Cooperative governance included strategies of accepting loss and refinancing debt and required mutual trust between creditor and debtor. Adversarial governance included extortion of debtors and revenge and was based on threats of violence. We found that creditors preferred refinancing debt or extorting debtors over accepting loss or using violence. We argue that the negotiated outcomes of drug debt have been neglected in research on drug markets, and explore how they require investment from the creditor, either in building trust or in deterring malfeasance through threats of violence. Using insights from economic sociology, the study highlights the importance of social control in illegal drug markets.     

准用性法律中非正式规范识别机制构建导论

准用性法律广泛存在于我国中央和地方的立法中。当准用性法律所指涉的准用规范是习惯、道德等非正式规范时,适用它们就可能引发一系列关联着非正式规范识别问题的争议。当前,理论界和实务界对这些可能的争议,往往采取无视或否视的姿态;即便偶有论者关注,也主要是针对个案或个别规范提出一些具体的实体性建议,而实际上,考虑到其大量存在,因而首先应给予这个问题更多的关注;并且,对非正式规范识别问题的解决,更应采取一种程序主义的进路。因此,应尽快启动对准用性法律中非正式规范识别的程序性机制的构建工作。     

Criminals and service providers: Cross-national dirty economies

This article examines the recent evolution of transnational crime. By focusing on two specific criminal activities, namely the trafficking in human beings and the illicit trafficking in arms, it tries to establish the relationship between conventional criminal organisations and the official economy. It concludes by observing that the illegal services provided by conventional criminals to official economic actors are made increasingly redundant, because the latter tend to set up their own illegal practices which service their activity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Drug-Related and Economic Crime Among Unauthorized Latino Immigrant and Other Arrestees in California

Abstract

This paper employs 1994-1996 California Drug Use Forecasting (CALDUF) and 1994 Los Angeles County Mexican Immigrant Residency Status Survey (LAC-MIRSS) data to estimate the level and determinants of drug-related and economic crime among unauthorized Latino immigrant and other arrestees in California. Controlling for various potential individual, contextual and geographic determinants, logistic regression results suggest the use of illicit drugs, having entered the United States more recently and residing in a home without paying any rent or mortgage positively-and residing in a home where another is dependent on an illegal substance negatively-influenced being apprehended for a drug-related crime. Although being an unauthorized Latino resident also had no effect on having been arrested for an economic crime, U.S.-born blacks and Latinos as well as non-Latino immigrants were each more likely than non-Latino U.S.-born whites to be arrested, as were younger females. Working full time and depending on another for a place to live diminished the probability. In sum, although illicit drug use augmented the probability of having been arrested for a drug-related crime, neither this nor unauthorized residency status among Latinos increased the likelihood of being arrested for an economic crime. A concluding section discusses several policy implications.     

The Structure of Conflicts of Fundamental Legal Rights

In recent years, the most widespread doctrine about the conflicts between fundamental (usually constitutional) legal rights could be summarized in the following three main theses: (1) The elements in conflict are legal principles, as opposed to legal rules; (2) Those conflicts are not consequences of the existence of inconsistencies or antinomies between the norms involved, but rather depend on the empirical circumstances of the case. In other words, the norms are logically consistent and the conflicts are not determinable a priori or in abstracto, but only in concreto; and (3) The classical criteria for solving conflicts between norms, such as lex superior, lex posterior and lex specialis, are not suitable to solve conflicts among fundamental legal rights. Indeed, they require a specific method known as ‘weighing and balancing’. Although all three theses could be (and indeed have been) regarded as problematic, in this paper I address mainly the second one. I try to show that there is room for a tertium genus between antinomies (deontic inconsistencies) and conflicts caused by strict empirical circumstances that I call ‘contextual antinomies’. There are situations in which the norms involved are not inconsistent but the conflict arises for logical reasons. My thesis is that many conflicts between fundamental legal rights fall in this category. I offer, in an appendix, a proposal of formalization of this kind of conflict and the elements involved in it.     

DEALERS,THIEVES, AND THE COMMON DETERMINANTS OF DRUG AND NONDRUG ILLEGAL EARNINGS*

Drug crime often is viewed as distinctive from other types of crime, meriting greater or lesser punishment. In view of this special status, this article asks whether and how illegal earnings attainment differs between drug sales and other forms of economic crime. We estimate monthly illegal earnings with fixed‐effects models, based on data from the National Supported Work Demonstration Project and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Although drug sales clearly differ from other types of income‐generating crime, we find few differences in their determinants. For example, the use of cocaine or heroin increases illegal earnings from both drug and nondrug crimes, indicating some degree of fungibility in the sources of illegal income. More generally, the same set of factors—particularly legal and illegal opportunities and embeddedness in criminal and conventional networks—predicts both drug earnings and nondrug illegal earnings.     

Putting a price on drugs: An economic sociological study of price formation in illegal drug markets

Prices in illegal drug markets are difficult to predict. Based on qualitative interviews with 68 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore dealers’ perspectives on fair prices and the processes that influence their pricing decisions. Synthesized through economic sociology, we draw on perspectives from traditions as different as behavioral economics and cultural analysis to demonstrate how participants in illicit drug distribution base their pricing decisions on institutional context, social networks, and drug market cultures. We find that dealers take institutional constraints into consideration and search for niches with high earnings and low risks. The use of transactions embedded in social networks promotes a trusting form of governance, which enables strategic network management and expedient distribution but also uncompetitive pricing. Finally, dealers’ pricing decisions are embedded in three different cultures narratives: business, friendship, and street cultural stories, with widely varying implications for prices. Our findings demonstrate how an economic sociology of illicit drug distribution can extend insights from behavioral economics and cultural studies into a coherent criminology of illegal drug markets.     

Market offenses and limits to growth

The purpose of this article is to explore various factors that may regulate or stabilize levels in market offenses. Instead of assuming that illegal markets are ‘out of control’, evidence is advanced to demonstrate, on the contrary, that there are indeed limits to growth in criminal markets. This is presented along three principal and interconnected arguments. First, social norms limit the ability of suppliers to shape demand for illicit goods and services. Using public opinion surveys, it is concluded that the more objectionable the moral status of an illegal market, the smaller the pool of potential consumers and sellers. Second, there are considerable obstacles that confront suppliers of illegal goods and services accumulating capital and upward mobility. The consequences of product illegality inhibit the organizational growth capacities as well as the geographic expansion of illicit firms. Third, while impunity via corruptible alliances do cancel some of the effects of product illegality, this impunity is not a constant that can always be depended upon. To the extent that corruption varies across jurisdictions and over time, illegal entrepreneurs may come to realize that impunity is intrinsically limited in scope and volatile in nature and over which they essentially have very limited control. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Networks and illicit associations in corrupt exchanges: representing a gelatinous system in Italy

This paper examines the role of illicit networks and associations in a corrupt exchange in contemporary Italy with the aim of better understanding the mechanisms of corruption. A social network analysis was conducted to explore the Big Events affair and the scandal concerning the School of Carabinieri officers in Florence. Much attention is focused on the actors, structures and informal norms that characterise the corrupt exchange with the aim of comprehending how the network sustains such exchange. Our goal is to identify the most powerful nodes and actors by determining their authority in the network, understanding the role of illicit associations (cricche) in sustaining the exchange and identifying the actors who control the informal norms.     

Paradoxes of Urban Housing Informality in the Developing World

This article addresses a series of paradoxes regarding informal settlements in cities in the developing world and their relation with the legal system. The first paradox regards the penalization of illegal land occupations on the one hand versus the legalization of that same practice on the other. Second, it looks at the relationship between land occupations as systematic violations of property rights, but with the goal of forming new property rights and thus paradoxically supporting private property as a substantive principle. Third, the reasoning behind the fact that the same system that denies legal access to housing for poor sectors simultaneously attempts to incorporate informal settlements in an ad hoc manner through legalization schemes is examined. It is shown that there is a logic to these paradoxes, which, although contradictory from standard legal perspectives, can be accommodated within a theoretical framework that distinguishes an internal normative order operating within informal settlements, from the state legal system, operative outside it. The proposed framework not only settles the paradoxes, but, this article concludes, can also guide attempts to deal with the enormous anticipated growth of informality in the developing world.     

Characteristics and dynamics of illegal firearms markets: Implications for a supply-side enforcement strategy

The question of whether the illegal firearms market serving criminals and juveniles can be disrupted has been vigorously debated. Recent research suggests that illegal gun markets consist of both “point sources” (ongoing diversions through scofflaw dealers and trafficking rings) and “diffuse sources” (acquisitions through theft and informal, voluntary sales). To the extent that systematic gun trafficking is an important source of weapons for criminals and youth, focused regulatory and investigative resources may be effective in disrupting the illegal flow. In this research, we use data on traced firearms to examine one aspect of the illegal gun market that holds the most immediate promise for focused supply-side enforcement efforts—close-to-retail diversions. We find that almost one-third of traceable crime guns were recently diverted from legitimate retail firearms commerce and that nearly one-third had two or more indicators of gun trafficking involving dealers, purchasers, and possessors. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding illegal gun markets and for developing effective supply-side enforcement strategies.     

Entrepreneurship and Legal Uncertainty: Unexpected Federal Trademark Registrations for Marijuana Derivatives

Though several states have legalized marijuana use, the drug remains illegal under federal law. Not surprisingly, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) refuses to register trademarks related to marijuana because of the federal prohibition. What is surprising, though, is the willingness to grant trademarks for cannabidiol (CBD), a marijuana derivative that is likewise expressly illegal under federal drug laws. This article explains why the USPTO's divergent treatment of trademark applications for CBD and marijuana products is legally incoherent. Additionally, when viewed from an entrepreneurial perspective, this phenomenon exemplifies how legal uncertainty breeds entrepreneurial opportunity. Specifically, the article argues that the evolving regulatory landscape for CBD and marijuana products has been and continues to be ripe for legal strategists and innovative entrepreneurs to combine forces to create competitive advantage in the emerging marijuana industry.