The Dragon’s shadow: an introduction to the special issue on ‘Chinese organized crime’

This paper provides an introduction to the articles submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime bringing forward numerous empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on Chinese organized crime in China and beyond.     

From urban to suburban criminology: Understanding crime in America’s “safe” cities

Simon Singer’s [1] America’s Safest City represents a new and innovative contribution to the criminological literature. It not only provides a fresh look at understanding crime in America, it sheds the light on a heretofore understudied part of the country, but one that is increasingly populated: Suburbia. Singer offers a new theoretical perspective which he calls “relational modernity.” Because the perspective is so new, it is important to critically appraise and evaluate its merits. Thus, this special issue offers an overview and analysis of the book from four luminaries in criminology.     

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.     

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.

From devil’s advocate to crime fighter: confirmation bias and debiasing techniques in prosecutorial decision-making

ABSTRACT

This research examines the role of confirmation bias in prosecutorial decisions before, during and after the prosecution. It also evaluates whether confirmation bias is reduced by changing the decision maker between arrest and prosecution. In Experiment 1, Swedish prosecutors (N?=?40) assessed 8 scenarios where they either decided themselves or were informed about a colleague’s decision to arrest or not arrest a suspect. Participants then rated how trustworthy the suspect’s statement was as well as the strength of new ambiguous evidence and the total evidence. They also decided whether to prosecute and what additional investigative measures to undertake. In Experiment 2 the same method was used with Law and Psychology students (N?=?60). Overall, prosecutors’ assessments before the prosecution indicated that they were able to act as their own devil’s advocate. Also, their assessments while deciding about whether to prosecute were reasonably balanced. However, after pressing charges, they displayed a more guilt-confirming mindset, suggesting they then took on the role as crime fighters. This differed from the student sample in which higher levels of guilt confirmation was displayed in relation to arrested suspects consistently before, during and after a prosecution decision. The role of prosecutors’ working experience is discussed.     

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.     

Organized crime or crime that is organized? The parrot trade in the neotropics

The illegal wildlife trade is one of the most profitable illegal industries in the world, only behind the trafficking of drugs, guns, and humans. Because of the relative ease in poaching wildlife combined with the possibility of high profit margins, many assume that organized crime is heavily linked to the trade. One group of species that is poached, trafficked and sold in illicit markets throughout the world are parrots. While some have claimed organized crime groups are involved in the trade, parrot experts contend there is no evidence of organized crime being involved. The purpose of this paper is to examine the structural organization of the illegal parrot trade in the neotropics to determine if the trade is driven by organized crime or if it is a simply a crime that is organized. The following study is based on 38 interviews with parrot poachers, middlemen, wildlife market sellers, and others knowledgeable on the trade in multiple cities within Bolivia and Peru to better understand the organization of the trade. The results garnered from these interviews do not support the notion that organized crime is involved in the illegal parrot trade in either country. The vast majority of participants are freelance operators where there appears to be no formal organization between or amongst those operating in the parrot trade. Implications of findings are discussed.     

Organized transnational crime in the Black Sea Region: a geopolitical dilemma?

States are unique and individual entities. However, geographic proximity, a common history and fate may cause existential threats to have common causes and solutions. To understand how, and why, states experience transnational organized crime as a national security threat differently, it is necessary to learn about the states and the culture of organized crime in the geographic region in which they are embedded. The objective here is to present the Post-Soviet Political Criminal Nexus as a part of the identity of Newly Independent States in the Black Sea Region (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) which poses an international security threat and impedes democratic development.

Institutional weakness and organized crime in Mexico: the case of Michoacán

In the case of Mexico, the prevalence of organized crime and drug trafficking can be explained more as a consequence of the weak and insufficient institutional bureaucracy that impedes the application of the law than the demand for narcotics in the United States. In this context, a study was undertaken in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, the state where one of the most violent criminal groups, Los Caballeros Templarios (the Knights Templar), a splinter group of La Familia Michoacána (the family Michoacán), is located. This article, which draws upon LaFree’s ‘social control’ research, raises the question of the urgent need to strengthen state and municipal government within an integrated strategy to combat organized crime. Failure to reform bureaucracies and the continued lack of local and state institutions that guarantee a modicum of compliance with the law will result in an institutional environment which continues to favor impunity and delinquency.     

EULEX and the fight against organised crime in Kosovo: what’s the record?

Staffed by international police officers, prosecutors and judges, EULEX was mandated to strengthen Kosovo’s domestic rule-of-law institutions and endowed with executive authority to ensure that high-level criminal cases, including organised crime, are properly investigated and prosecuted. Yet, after more than nine years of operation, EULEX has proven largely ineffective in using its executive authority to counter organised crime and its capacity-building efforts have not led to significant local improvements in this area. Insufficient framework conditions shaped by years of impunity for politico-criminal power structures prevent capacity-building efforts from taking effect as local rule-of-law institutions remain hesitant and timid to investigate and prosecute high-level criminals. It is argued that EULEX’s own conduct and weak executive performance has severely undermined the mission’s efforts to strengthen local law enforcement through capacity-building.     

``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.     

‘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.     

From Safety to Danger: Constructions of Crime in a Women’s Magazine

This study examines how the print media constructs signifiers of safety and danger for women. We analyze 155 news articles regarding crime and criminal justice from 1970 to 1990 in Chatelaine magazine, a Canadian women’s periodical. Both content and textual analyses are deployed to evaluate the media representations of crime and their role in facilitating images of fear and safety. We show that the meanings associated with women’s danger and safety in news narratives are socially constructed through claims, sources, content and culture. We find that news reporting did not initially incorporate signifiers of fear. However, crime messages increasingly included images of fear in the later reporting period. We argue that the transformations surrounding these images and texts are influenced by the rise in neoliberal thought in the 1980s. Our results indicate that ideological struggles external to the media are crucial to the representation of crime, which ultimately influence signifiers of danger and safety for women.     

From clean up to FICAC: Anti-corruption in Fiji’s post coup politics

The leaders of Fiji’s 2006 military coup launched a ‘cleanup campaign’ and set up an Independent Commission Against Corruption. So far it has brought court cases against about 24 people. Among them is the former Prime Minister, who was charged with corruption for his role in institutions designed to promote the economic interests of indigenous Fijians (who constitute about 56% of the population). The article considers what counts as ‘corruption’ in these Affirmative Action policies: a so-called ‘Agriculture Scam’, which distributed farm implements free to Fijian farmers; a company called Fijian Holdings, which received concessional finance from the government; and a Native Land Trust Board, which collects rent on behalf of indigenous landowners. It concludes that army and popular opinion in Fiji hold conceptions of corruption that are much broader than the offences set out in the country’s penal code, and which the new ICAC is attempting to enforce.     

Freedom to think – the value of multiple clinical narratives in women’s prisons†

Abstract

The merits of being multi-lingual are widely recognised. This paper considers the application of this metaphor to the conceptualisation of clinical work in a women’s prison. We suggest that sharing ‘languages’ from different theoretical orientations in open fora enables teams to build deep and nuanced understandings of clinical and systemic complexity, of particular value in secure settings. This discussion reflects the service model developed and used within HMP/YOI Holloway, a large women’s prison in London, which has recently been closed. We utilise a case example, with formulations and recommendations from several perspectives, to illustrate the value of maintaining a rich, inclusive discourse. We describe the benefits of such an approach to staff teams, to institutions and to those we serve, and consider the implications for organisation of services to maximise potential for change and recovery.