Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice

Philip L. Reichel, Jay S. Albanese

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781483321967
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Transnational crime and justice will characterize the 21st century in same way that traditional street crimes dominated the 20th century. In the Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice, Philip Reichel and Jay Albanese bring together top scholars from around the world to offer perspectives on the laws, crimes, and criminal justice responses to transnational crime. This concise, reader-friendly handbook is organized logically around four major themes: the problem of transnational crime; analysis of specific transnational crimes; approaches to its control; and regional geographical analyses. Each comprehensive chapter is designed to be explored as a stand-alone topic, making this handbook an important textbook and reference tool for students and practitioners alike.

PART I

The Problem of Transnational Crime

The chapters making up Part I of the Handbook set the stage for the remaining chapters by providing the historical and contemporary context and then explaining the importance of researching transnational crime.

In Chapter 1, Mitchel P. Roth reminds us of how recent the scholarly interest in transnational crime is. This chapter describes how historical antecedents such as sea piracy and slavery gave rise to modern transnational crimes and explains how the prohibitions of various items (e.g., drugs) encourage the development of transnational crime. The chapter concludes by considering the shape transnational crime might have in the coming years.

In Chapter 2, Dammer, Reichel, and He provide an overview of comparative studies in both criminology and criminal justice. After distinguishing those two subject areas, the authors explain why comparative studies are important. They then provide examples of how comparison is used by criminologists (e.g., comparing crime patterns in two or more countries) and by criminal justice scholars (e.g., identifying similarities and differences in how countries respond to crime). In the chapter’s final section on future issues, the authors anticipate changes in how transnational crime is defined and addressed by the world community.

Chapter 3, written by Rosemary Barberet, examines the problems inherent in researching transnational crime. After discussing the degree to which conventional crime measurement can adequately measure transnational crime, the chapter describes some of the better composite analyses available for transnational crime that rely on triangulating data sources and methods of measurement. The chapter concludes by highlighting recent advances in knowledge in the area of measurement and analytical methods for transnational crime.

CHAPTER 1

Historical Overview of Transnational Crime

Mitchel P. Roth

It has only been 30 years since the President of the Societe Internationale de Criminologie, Denis Szabo, wrote in the preface to a book of essays by criminologists concerning new trends in transnational crime that “the 30th International Course in Criminology chose an uncommon subject—transnational crime—which is rarely examined within our discipline” (MacNamara & Stead, 1982, p. vii). Anyone who has attended a criminology or criminal justice conference over the past 20 years would be struck at how recently transnational crime was considered peripheral to the study of crime. In the 1990s, increasing focus on the globalization and increasing complexity of criminality has led many criminologists to specialize in the internationalization of crimes. This chapter chronicles the cross-border historical antecedents of modern transnational crimes and the processes that gave rise to them.

Defining Transnational Crime

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One of the more challenging tasks for anyone seeking to identify transnational crime has been determining what “transnational crime” actually refers to. What has not helped the dialogue is that “the terminology is highly unstable and at least four terms overlap each other,” including transnational crime, transnational organized crime, international organized crime, and multinational crime (Madsen, 2009, pp. 7–8). Still others refer to this phenomenon as cross-national crime and cross-border or transboundary criminality. However, the issue becomes clearer once international crimes are subtracted from the equation, since the vast majority of definitions of international crime refer to activities that threaten global security, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Of all the expressions that have been used, transnational has had the most adherents.

For much of human history, criminal activity has been a local or regional concern. Prior to the great strides in transportation and communication technology in the 19th century, the conceptual underpinnings of transnational crime were still years away. By most accounts, the term transnational crime from a criminological perspective emerged sometime in the mid-1970s, following the lead of the United Nations, which was brandishing the term in an attempt to identify types of crimes that transcended national borders. Like terrorism and organized crime, there is no accepted consensus on a definition of transnational crime. The expression was developed by the U.N. Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch in 1974 to guide discussion at a United Nations crime conference. Four years later, Gerhard Mueller—a prominent criminologist and chief of the U.N. Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch from 1974–1982—suggested that

it referred to a criminological term, with no claim to providing a juridical concept, and consisted simply of a list of five activities: 1) crime as business, organized crime, white-collar crime, and corruption; 2) offenses involving works of art and other cultural property; 3) criminality associated with alcoholism and drug abuse; 4) violence of transnational and comparative international significance; and 5) criminality associated with migration and flight from natural disaster and hostilities. (Reuter & Petrie, 1999, p. 7)

One high-ranking Interpol official contributed an “early informal” definition of transnational crimes, relegating them to crimes “whose resolution necessitates the cooperation between two or more countries” (Bossard, 1990, p. 3). In 1994, one leading authority asserted that “transnational crime is a crime undertaken by an organization based in one state but committed in several host countries, whose market conditions are favorable, and risk apprehension is low” (Williams, 1994, p. 96). Likewise, the authors of one recent study defined transnational crime as “those activities involving the crossing of national borders and violation of at least one country’s criminal laws.” Furthermore, they suggest that most examples of this form of crime are “economically motivated and involve some form of smuggling” (Andreas & Nadelmann, 2006, p. 255, n. 3).

In 1995, the United Nations defined transnational crime as “offenses whose inception, proportion and/or direct or indirect effects involve more than one country” (U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2002, p. 4). It identified a laundry list of 18 categories of transnational offenses whose inception, perpetration, and direct or indirect efforts involve more than one country. These categories include money laundering, terrorist activities, theft of art and cultural objects, theft of intellectual property, illicit arms trafficking, aircraft hijacking, maritime piracy, insurance fraud, computer crime, environmental crime, trafficking in persons, trade in human body parts, illegal drug trafficking, fraudulent bankruptcy, infiltration of legal business, and the corruption and bribery of public or party officials.

There are legions of transnational criminals operating solo or with a handful of associates. However, the emphasis on transnational crime is heavily predicated on the activities associated with “transnational organized crime.” Over the past decade, it has become increasingly apparent that the notion of “organized” groups of actors in a traditional sense is a vestige of the past. Well into the 1990s, organized crime definitions were heavily based on the hierarchical nature of crime networks and syndicates. This became especially clear in 2000 when the United Nations in its Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNODC, 2000) defined organized crime

as a structured group of three or more persons existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences in accordance with this Convention in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or material benefit. (UNODC, 2000, Article 2a)

A serious crime refers to “conduct constituting a criminal offense punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty” (UNODC, Article 2b). Organized crime is regarded as transnational when it

(a) is committed in more than one State; (b) is committed in one State but a part of its preparation, planning, direction or control takes place in another State; (c) is committed in one State but involves an organized crime group that engages in criminal activities in more than one State; or (d) is committed in one State but has substantial effects in another State. (UNODC, 2000, Article 3.2)

Another way to view transnational crime is crime “that in one of several ways involves two or more sovereign jurisdictions” (Madsen, 2009, p. 8). While the tendency is to focus on violent or high profile crimes such as the drug trade and human trafficking, transnational crime also involves the more mundane, such as the parental dispute over custody of a child involving two countries. Crimes can also be organized and transnational, but do not actually violate international law, such as the smuggling of nontaxed tobacco products from country to another (Madsen, 2009, p. 9).

Definitions of complex terminology can be highly problematic. Indeed, it becomes even more so as transnational crime becomes more and more globalized. These problems are exacerbated when it comes to distinguishing virtual borders from geographical ones. Thus, one can hypothetically commit a crime in another country without leaving his or her home country, such as in the case of Nigerian advance fee fraud, better known by its criminal statute number, “419.” Definitions become even more useless when one considers formerly distinct forms of criminality such as organized crime, white-collar crime, and terrorist activities, which increasingly fall under the rubric of transnational crime. More recently, various academics and officials have expanded the definition to include new activities such as terrorism and cybercrime, but not without some debate. In the end, however, one must accept the fact that “computer networks and the Internet do not recognize international boundaries” (Fairchild & Dammer, 2001, p. 327) any more than drugs and human traffickers do.

Any historical examination of modern transnational crime will reveal that there are actually few new examples of transnational crime. The illegal trafficking and smuggling of weapons, migrants, illegal substances, and humans, as well as terrorism, tax evasion, environmental crimes, corruption, and financial fraud, have been taking place for decades if not centuries. What has changed according to several researchers is the scale of these activities and the increasing “deterritorialization” of crime as criminal actors make use of new advances in communication and transportation (Dandurand, Tkachuk, & Castle, 1998, p. 2).

Transnational Crime: An Historical Perspective

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The prospective shape of transnational crime can be discerned in numerous crimes and smuggling networks in the premodern world. For example, from a historical perspective, many of the trade routes linking modern transnational criminal networks between countries were established centuries ago, long before national boundaries had been established. In fact, the classical overland trade route linking Byzantium (now Istanbul) to Rome through Greece and the Balkans into Western Europe is still used by modern drugs and weapons traffickers, and the so-called amber route, connecting the Black Sea to the Baltic, plays an integral role in smuggling and human traffic operations from China and other parts of Asia. Meanwhile, the water route across the Adriatic from Albania to Italy continues to bring various forms of contraband into Puglia in the south of Italy, and then north to the rest of Europe, and illegal immigrants and marijuana still follow ancient routes blazed during the Roman Empire into Europe from Africa through Morocco and Spain.

In similar fashion, ancient underground banking systems have operated next to legitimate banking systems for centuries. Different types of these systems have evolved in various parts of the world, including hawala (transfer) and hundi in South Asia and fei-ch’ien (flying money) in China (Passas, 1999). Initially conceived as noncriminal strategies to move money and goods quickly, they have been adapted by transnational criminals to bypass formal state banking systems and regulations, allowing them to move money without a paper trail. The best known of these, hawala, had its origins in early medieval commerce in the Near and Middle East, in an era marked by substantial long-distance trading, and played an essential security role during a time when brigands and pirates were on the prowl for merchants in transit by land or sea. This scheme protected merchants by allowing them to transfer funds based on trusted and Islamic propriety without the physical necessity of shepherding currency through foreign countries.

Sea piracy and the illicit trade in humans, usually in the form of slaves, are among the earliest examples of organized crime on a multinational or global scale; in fact, the slave trade has been described as the “world’s oldest trade” and can be traced back to the 3rd millennium; the trafficking of women, to at least the beginning of the Christian era (Chanda, 2007). Counterfeiting activities have been around as long as there has been a profit in it. In 17th-century England, the government selected Isaac Newton, “the smartest man in England,” as warden of the mint to avert what by the late 1690s had become a national crisis, because it became increasingly difficult to find “legal silver” in circulation (Levenson, 2009, p. 109). This grew into a major concern at the highest levels of power as the criminal underworld melted clipped silver into ingots to be sold on the continent, leading to an investigation by Parliament, which feared lacking sufficient funds to pay its soldiers on the battlefields of Europe. Newton’s solution was to reconfigure silver coins so that they would be much more difficult to clip, a process he was able to see through to completion by 1699.

Illicit arms, drugs, and human trafficking have received most of the focus of transnational crime studies over the past decade. More recently, Gastrow (1998) suggested that the smuggling of a herd of horses across the South African frontier to the German cavalry by a gang led by Australian immigrant Scotty Smith should be considered “one of the first transnational criminal operations in South Africa.” As early as the 17th century, French provocateurs were smuggling illicit weapons to various Native American tribes in the American colonies, as they contested the British for hegemony in the region. But examples can be found in many other fields as well. Not as well chronicled, recent research has focused on obscure topics such as smuggling binder wire into Canada from the United States in the early 20th century (Evans, 2011) and the trafficking of candelilla, a waxlike substance extracted from native Mexican plants used in the manufacture of cosmetics and other commodities. This practice flourished between the 1950s and 1980s, when the Mexican government strictly controlled its sale and production. A Texas entrepreneur stepped in and together with a host of candelilla makers, known as candeleros, created a “system of drop points and independent truckers” (Carey & Marak, 2011, p. 2) to smuggle the product across the border, much like drugs and humans are today. Ironically, it was not ended by law enforcement but by candeleros who discovered they could make even more money by selling their labor in the United States.

Piracy

No form of transnational crime illustrates the continuum of transnational crime past and present better than the ancient crime of piracy. In contrast to their precursors, modern pirates have taken advantage of high technology, bases in failed nation-states, potential alliances with transnational terrorists, and a global economy dependent on secure shipping lanes. Nonetheless, modern powers have proved no more able to fend off pirates, as demonstrated by the April 2009 standoff between an $800 million U.S. Navy destroyer and a handful of pirates in a lifeboat—the first incident in two centuries in which foreign pirates had captured a U.S. vessel for ransom (Gettleman, 2009; Mazzetti, 2009). The last time this took place was when the Barbary pirates of Northern Africa took sailors hostage...