Describing Contemporary Maritime Piracy

This chapter begins by describing pirates and their organizations. It provides a sketch of “typical” pirate organizations in countries such as Indonesia, Somalia, and Nigeria. The chapter then proceeds to explore pirate activity. It describes the Maritime Piracy Event and Location Dataset (MPELD) and compares and contrasts these data with other databases on modern sea piracy. Next, the chapter uses the data to illustrate geographic and temporal patterns of maritime piracy. The last section of the chapter provides assessments of key determinants of piracy mentioned in the literature. These empirical patterns provide a basic picture of contemporary maritime piracy.