Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Trade in stolen and illegally exported arts and antiquities is now commonly recognized to be one of the most serious and widespread categories of transnational crime. It is thought to be one of the most lucrative, monetarily rivaling the trafficking of illicit drugs worldwide, and it is a business that involves a spectrum of actors including impoverished farmers, organized criminal networks, and wealthy elite art collectors, galleries, auction houses, and museums. Trafficking in antiquities, however, is a phenomenon largely understudied among criminologists, especially from a white collar crime perspective. The aim of this paper is to discuss preliminary research findings conducted for a doctoral dissertation project that takes as its focus antiquities trafficking as white collar crime.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The exploitation of illicit economies, such as the illicit drug economy, has become an important feature of terrorism and many other military conflicts. But the current counter-narcoterrorism chic is too simplistic. Although belligerent groups do gain vast financial benefits from their participation in the illicit economy, they gain much more from their sponsorship of the illicit economy. Based on the cases of Peru, Colombia, Afghanistan, Burma, and Northern Ireland, the analysis will show that belligerents also gain freedom of operation, and crucially, significant political capital with the local population. The conditions that influence the size and the scope of the belligerents� gains from the illicit economy include a) the state of the overall economy; b) the character of the illicit economy; c) the presence of thuggish traffickers; and d) government response to the illicit economy. Far from being highly complimentary to the effort to defeat the belligerents, government efforts to suppress the illicit economy are frequently counterproductive to counterterrorism/ counterinsurgency objectives.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: The paper offers a theoretical framework for analyzing international efforts against illicit trade. I argue that the main obstacle to such efforts is the conflict of interest between pro-traffic and anti-traffic governments. Pro-traffic governments support domestic actors who benefit from the trade (e.g. arms and drugs manufacturers, banks laundering money) and oppose initiatives to ban or strictly regulate the trade; anti-traffic governments support such initiatives since they bear heavy social costs resulting from the trade (e.g. high rates of gun violence or drug addiction). Pro-traffic governments may ultimately join the cooperative endeavors due to interstate coercion or pressure from domestic public opinion and transnational civil society. However, due to the divergence of preferences between pro-traffic and anti-traffic governments, anti-traffic arrangements usually take the form of soft law. To support my argument, I examine the international efforts against trafficking in drugs, small arms, persons, cultural property, and money laundering.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Prior quantitative research has explicated the relationship between illicit drug markets and rates of violent crime across U.S. cities, but few studies have investigated the effects of drug markets on violent crime at the neighborhood-level or the role of informal social control in deterring drug market activity. Noting the paucity of macro-level drug market research, the present study used neighborhood-level data to investigate two research questions: (1) Does the illicit drug market explain variation in levels of violence across neighborhoods, net of concentrated disadvantage and other important influences? (2) Does informal social control mediate the relationship between exogenous factors and drug market activity? The results of a series of structural equation models reveal that the drug economy significantly mediates the effect of concentrated disadvantage on rates of violent crime. In addition, the analysis suggests that informal social control mediates the pathway connecting exogenous factors and drug market activity. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to scholarly research and policy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: My paper will address the “lack of governance,” more precisely lack of “official or recognized governance,” in the domain of illicit economies. The analysis will center on illegal drug economies, but will be extended to other illicit economies as well. The paper will examine: How illicit economies arise? What are the regulatory requirements for functioning of illicit economies are; i.e. is no governance optimal? and What threats do illicit economies pose to states? It will further examine the relationship between criminal networks and belligerents, such as terrorists and insurgents, and argue against the simplistic assumption of a unity of interests and purposes of these two actors. It will draw on cases of Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, and Somalia for illustrations.Although illicit economies are on the one hand the manifestation of a lack of governance, their very existence is due to some kind of pre-existing regulation – state or international – that prohibits them. Such impetus for emergence of illicit economies can be criminalization of certain behavior, such as the consumption and production of illicit substances, or the imposition of some limitation on economic activity, such as requirement that all trade with legal goods be subject to taxation. Hence, economic sanctions also, although imposed on states to modify their behavior, frequently give rise to illicit economies. Second, the existence of an illicit economy presupposes some level of demand for the commodity or service that the economy generates. And third, the emergence of an illicit economy is also critically dependent on the inability-- (or unwillingness) of the state/ international regime to fully enforce its prohibition-- i.e., limits of the extent of the regulating entity’s governance. Although illicit economies thrive in ungoverned spaces where the regulating entity’s means of suppression are limited, illicit economies still frequently need some regulation. At minimum, the economy and its actors need some level of predictability and the assurance of property rights. The “wild” space is rarely fully wild; frequently, it is only differently governed. Since the state (or international organization/ regime) by defining the economy as illegal is committing itself to officially suppressing it, it cannot provide the minimum protection and regulatory functions that the economy needs for smooth functioning with limited transaction costs. Consequently, other actors fill the lacuna of governance: criminals – whether organized or not; armed actors, such as paramilitaries, warlords, insurgents, and terrorists; and corrupt government officials. But the relationship between criminals and belligerents is full of friction and fraught with problems.