scholarly journals West Africa – the Region’s Pivotal Role in International Drug Trafficking

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Richard Rousseau
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
African Continent ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Drug Traffickers ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
The Impact

Africa is a pivotal continent for international drug traffickers and criminal organizations. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates, approximately 40 to 50 tons of cocaine destined for the European market passes through the African continent each year.1 The illicit profits from such activities amount to at least 1.8 billion dollars, but it could be much larger according to some estimates. Such profits provide drug traffickers with the financial means to destabilize already weak governmental structures and law enforcement institutions in various African countries. This massive profits fuel a trade that has far reaching consequences for Africa and the destination countries for these illegal drugs. What is the impact of the illicit drug trade on Africa?

scholarly journals The Impact of Drug Trafficking on Informal Security Actors in Kenya

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Schuberth
Keyword(s):  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Drug Trafficking Organizations ◽  
Drug Traffickers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Two Sides

The Kenyan state is currently under pressure from two sides: First, numerous non-state armed groups have taken over the provision of security in areas where the state is practically absent. Second, drug-trafficking organizations are gaining ground as the country is increasingly being used as a major transit hub for narcotics. This article investigates the relationship between drug trafficking and informal security provision in Kenya and draws analogies from comparable experiences in Latin America and West Africa. Field research in Kenya has demonstrated that profit-oriented, informal security actors in Mombasa work for drug lords, while their counterparts in Nairobi are more likely to be hired by politicians. Moreover, faith-based vigilante groups in both cities appear to be less susceptible to external manipulation by drug traffickers. The article concludes by considering the potential consequences of an expansion of the drug trade in Kenya.

scholarly journals The impact of illicit drug networks on the effectiveness of law enforcement in South Africa

2022 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 338-360
Author(s):  
Petrus Machethe ◽  
Jacob Tseko Mofokeng
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Illicit Drugs ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Target Population ◽  
Geographical Differences ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Drug Networks

In the past few years, South Africa has experienced an enormous increase in the amount and types of illicit drug manufacturing, distribution and use. This has resulted in an increase in the burden of crime and health risks in the community. The patterns of drug availability and drug use have been linked to regional and country variations, socio-economic status, racial and geographical differences. Because of the dramatic increase in the availability of various illicit drugs, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report (2012) identified South Africa as one of the drug centres of the world. This raises concerns about whether law enforcement agencies perform their functions effectively. This paper focuses on the illicit drug networks that hinder the effectiveness of law enforcement in South Africa. The modus operandi used to produce and smuggle illicit drugs and the challenges experienced by law enforcement to prevent and combat illicit drugs will be discussed. The data was collected through in-depth interviews with experts within the criminal justice system in South Africa. The study conducted in 2017/ 2018 in terms of the scientific measurements, has adopted a qualitative approach. Data was collected from a target population consisting of 11 SAPS drug-related crime experts, including members of the SAPS specialised detectives of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), crime intelligence members, border police, the International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL) and commanders at ports of entries. A documentary study was used as a secondary method of data collection. Data obtained from interviews were analysed by identifying common themes from the respondents' descriptions of their experiences.

scholarly journals Interdicting International Drug Trafficking: a Network Approach for Coordinated and Targeted Interventions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Giommoni ◽  
Giulia Berlusconi ◽  
Alberto Aziani
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Network Approach ◽  
Targeted Interventions ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Edge Betweenness ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Social Network Approach ◽  
The Impact ◽  
International Trafficking

AbstractThere is a relative dearth of literature on both the effects of cross-border interdictions and the impact of different types of interventions on international drug trafficking. This study identifies the main trafficking routes for cocaine and heroin, along with comparing the disruptive effects induced by targeted and non-coordinated interventions. It adopts a social network approach to identify the routes along which cocaine and heroin are trafficked, and then simulates the impact of different interdiction strategies on these two trafficking networks. The findings indicate that targeting countries based on their respective positions in the networks, as opposed to on the basis of the quantity of drugs exchanged, is more likely to disrupt drug flows. More specifically, concentrating law enforcement resources on countries with several incoming or outgoing trafficking connections, or those countries that mediate between producer, transit and consumer countries, would appear to be particularly effective in this regard. Interventions focused on specific trafficking routes are also likely to be effective if these routes have high edge betweenness centrality scores. This study contributes to extant understanding on the vulnerability of cocaine and heroin international trafficking networks, and, moreover, demonstrates that empirically-driven strategies are potentially more effective at interdicting international trafficking than non-strategic and non-coordinated interventions.

scholarly journals Analysis of Drug Trafficking and Corruption Nexus in Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Region

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Salawati Mat Basir ◽  
Mohammad Naji Shah Mohammadi ◽  
Elmira Sobatian
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Drug Addiction ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Economic Cooperation ◽  
Drug Related Problems ◽  
Control Drug ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Drug Traffickers

<p>The main objective of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is economic development in its region but directly unproductive profit seeking activities such as drug trafficking is the prominent barrier to reach this goal. All members spend lots of money to fight against drug trafficking, as all of them suffer from drug addiction and drug related problems. The first step to cope with this problem is to identify the factors and incentives that make this region vulnerable for drug trafficking activities and to unearth what makes this region a haven for drug traffickers. A bulk of literature supports the concept that organized criminal organizations are not able to operate when there are not any forms of corruption since they are strongly interrelated. In this paper, we analyze the link between drug trafficking and corruption in ECO region in order to develop ECO strategies to hamper and interrupt these transnational crimes. Corruption has posed major challenges to the efforts taken to control drug and also has seriously damaged the ECO members’ image in international community. One of the practical solutions is the responsibility of ECO organization in implementing rule of law in the region. Undoubtedly, fighting against corruption in ECO region is a joint responsibility of international and intercontinental community and this responsibility requires collective action and cooperation among countries in the region.</p>

scholarly journals Criminal networks analysis in missing data scenarios through graph distances

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0255067
Author(s):  
Annamaria Ficara ◽  
Lucia Cavallaro ◽  
Francesco Curreri ◽  
Giacomo Fiumara ◽  
Pasquale De Meo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Incomplete Data ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Criminal Networks ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Edge Removal ◽  
Graph Distances ◽  
Intentional Deception ◽  
Node Removal ◽  
The Impact

Data collected in criminal investigations may suffer from issues like: (i) incompleteness, due to the covert nature of criminal organizations; (ii) incorrectness, caused by either unintentional data collection errors or intentional deception by criminals; (iii) inconsistency, when the same information is collected into law enforcement databases multiple times, or in different formats. In this paper we analyze nine real criminal networks of different nature (i.e., Mafia networks, criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations) in order to quantify the impact of incomplete data, and to determine which network type is most affected by it. The networks are firstly pruned using two specific methods: (i) random edge removal, simulating the scenario in which the Law Enforcement Agencies fail to intercept some calls, or to spot sporadic meetings among suspects; (ii) node removal, modeling the situation in which some suspects cannot be intercepted or investigated. Finally we compute spectral distances (i.e., Adjacency, Laplacian and normalized Laplacian Spectral Distances) and matrix distances (i.e., Root Euclidean Distance) between the complete and pruned networks, which we compare using statistical analysis. Our investigation identifies two main features: first, the overall understanding of the criminal networks remains high even with incomplete data on criminal interactions (i.e., when 10% of edges are removed); second, removing even a small fraction of suspects not investigated (i.e., 2% of nodes are removed) may lead to significant misinterpretation of the overall network.

Fear and Loathing in Central America

2020 ◽  
pp. 295-306
Author(s):  
Russell Crandall
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
The State ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Economic Action ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
The World

This chapter begins with Nils Gilman's seminal essay “The Twin Insurgency,” stating that gangs aim to carve out de facto zones of autonomy for themselves by crippling the state's ability to constrain their freedom of economic action. It talks about gangsters in Latin America that took advantage of the vulnerability of the states they operated in to such a degree that they frequently became shadow powers. It also details how gangs terrorized their host societies, using corruption, extortion, and bullets as their weapons of choice. The chapter cites the statistics that emphasized that the most violent cities in the world were in Latin America, clarifying that the statistics were a result of the impunity enjoyed by the region's criminal organizations, primarily those with ties to the illicit drug trade. It discusses how drug gangs often served as the de facto administrator of social services in slums, where the state failed to provide much of anything.

scholarly journals Mapping method in research of drug crime regional criminological features (Ukraine taken as an example)

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 01011
Author(s):  
Andriy Babenko ◽  
Ruslan Tarasenko ◽  
Oleksandr Ostrohliadov
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Mapping Method ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Criminological Theory ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Drug Crime ◽  
Illicit Drug Trafficking

General national average drug crime rates on which the contemporary criminological theory and practice is based do not adequately reflect regional peculiarities in the field of illicit drug trafficking as they level high quality/quantity parameters in some areas and their lower values in others. Still, consideration of only national totals in organization of crime counteraction leads to incomplete information, neglecting its negative trends in certain areas, thus, causing aberration of the actual drug crime situation and using improper countermeasures. Under such circumstances the state law enforcement agencies do not operate preemptively against the illicit drug trafficking, do not contain in due time outbreaks of drug crime in certain areas- crime donors, and, as a result, the efficiency of steps aimed at drug addiction prevention as well as crime limitation in total becomes substantively deteriorated. Criminological mapping method enables the territorial police divisions to monitor existing criminological situation, inform the public and other law enforcement agencies on trends and locations of drug crime expansion, and reveal the most affected areas to be able to react promptly to crime pattern changes in regions. The application of this method enabled the evident demonstration of the fact that in Ukraine the Eastern and Southern areas were most affected by drug crime, wherein the affection factor in this part is twice higher than general national value.

India will be increasingly key to Asian drug cartels

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Content Type ◽  
North East ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
Drugs And Crime

Significance The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned that India’s north-east is becoming a major hub for the regional drug trade. Asian drug cartels have long relied on India as a source of drug precursors, the chemicals used in narcotics manufacture. Impacts Pandemic-related hardship will prompt a rise in consumption of relatively cheap drugs such as methamphetamine in the region. Drug cartels based in India and elsewhere in South and South-east Asia will rely increasingly on online platforms to conduct their business. The different states in India’s north-east will struggle to coordinate their efforts to crack down on drug trafficking.

Certain tendencies of development of the Russian criminal-law drug abuse policy conditioned by the impact of international treaties, to which the Russian Federation is a party and the membership thereof in international organizations on responsibility for illicit drug trafficking

Narkokontrol ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Vyacheslavovich Fedorov ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Illicit Drug Trafficking ◽  
Law Making

The article concerns some tendencies of development of Russian legislative (law-making, law-establishing) criminal-law antidrug policy conditioned by the impact on development of national criminal-law antidrug policy of international treaties, the party to which is the Russian Federation and the membership thereof in international organizations.

scholarly journals Open sources revіew on salw illegal use and seizures in Ukraine (2019)

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (92) ◽  
pp. 299-324
Author(s):  
В.С. Безногих
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Summary Table ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
Criminal Legislation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Qualitative Characteristics ◽  
Monitoring Platform

The article provides an analysis of crime related to firearms, ammunition and explosives. It is written based on the results of the study of information on this category of crimes collected in open sources (law enforcement websites and media news resources). In contrast to the departmental statistics and narrative reports that serve certain tasks of law enforcement agencies, the present analysis attempts to describe additional qualitative characteristics for this category of crimes in order to identify more specific trends and determine the impact of the situation in south-eastern Ukraine caused by the armed aggression of the Russian Federation. Relying on his experience of work in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) projects, the author of the study attempts to adapt and apply the principles of collecting of qualitative information from open sources, which are used to collect information on drug-related crimes for the Drug Monitoring Platform in the Afghan Opiate Trade Project (AOPT). The study covers all types of crimes related to firearms, ammunition and explosives, both those in which the weapon is the subject of a crime (illegal possession, sale, smuggling), and crimes in which a weapon or explosive used as an instrument of crime (murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, property damage, hooliganism). The study also includes cases of illegal use of traumatic firearms, which within the existing criminal legislation of Ukraine are classified as hooliganism. The article provides summary table on prices for certain types of weapons and ammunition in the regions of Ukraine based on the results of successful operations of weapons purchasing realized by law enforcement agencies. In general, the materials presented in the article are an additional source of criminalistics information and can serve as a basis for further analysis and research.  

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