Criminal Entities Research Articles

Decrypting the Balkan underworld. A theoretical analysis of encrypted communication in organized crime

This article delves into the pervasive deployment of encrypted communication platforms within Balkan criminal entities, including Albanian organized crime, offering a meticulous examination and legal scrutiny spanning the period from 2019 to 2023. Focusing primarily on communication channels such as “Matrix,” “Sky ECC,” and “EncroChat,” this study unveils the intricate interplay between these technologies and criminal activities, shedding light on their implications for investigation of such sophisticated organized crime groups. Case studies of Balkan Mafia on the use of EncroChat and Sky ECC during 2019-2022 reveal their unprecedented influence on criminal activities, offering anonymity, non-traceability, and facilitating organized crime on a global scale. This research employs a multifaceted methodology that seamlessly integrates descriptive analysis, literature review, and theoretical exploration. It supports an inclusive perspective, urging scholars and policymakers to move beyond outdated frameworks to effectively combat the evolving impact of organized cybercrime on societies worldwide. Keywords: cybercrime, Sky ECC, EnroChat, Balkan mafia, Albanian organized crime, hybrid communication, technological shift.

Hamas in Cyberspace: Social Media and Forms of Political Expression

This study examines the digital practices and online discourses of Hamas on Twitter, with a specific focus on the Palinfoen account linked to the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC). The study examines 3,500 tweets related to events in Palestine, which were either tweeted or retweeted by the Palinfoen account. To explore these practices, the researcher employs digital ethnography and a discourse-historical approach to analyze the collected tweets and retweets. The findings of the analysis show that the tweets revolve around key figures such as journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and Israel. Abu Akleh is portrayed as a courageous and esteemed senior journalist who became a victim of Israeli brutality. Israel, on the other hand, is depicted as a criminal entity, held responsible for the cold-blooded killing of Abu Akleh and the desecration of her coffin. The killing is presented as an inhumane and irrational act committed by Israel against a respected journalist. Additionally, the tweets from Palinfoen focus on the events at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israeli figures are described using terms like "genocidal Jews," "Israeli occupation forces," "enemy occupier gangs," and an "illegitimate regime," while Palestinian figures are referred to as "worshippers," "families," and "Muslims." The discourses promoted by Hamas on Twitter place agency and accountability on the Israeli side. In conclusion, this analysis unsurprisingly highlights how the Palinfoen Twitter account portrays Palestinian resistance as a legitimate reaction.

Naming the threat: lay prototypes of organized crime in Italy and the US

ABSTRACT Organized crime represents a pervasive global threat while posing unique challenges to law enforcement and policymakers. Yet, research about public understanding of this phenomenon remains limited. This research, comprising three studies conducted in Italy (Ntot = 477) and the United States (Ntot = 474), fills this crucial gap by investigating the lay prototypes of organized crime and advancing scholarly debates surrounding public understanding of criminal phenomena. Studies 1a-b identified the shared features of organized crime. In Studies 2a-b, participants rated the features’ centrality. In Italy, centrality ratings were underlain by an 8-dimensional latent structure and predicted by exposure to news. In the US, centrality ratings were underlain by a 7-dimensional structure and predicted by exposure to TV and movies. Studies 3a-b further underscored the significance of the features by demonstrating their diagnostic value. Participants identified criminal entities described using central (versus peripheral) features as more representative of organized crime, and perceived them as more dangerous. Despite a tendency among US participants towards a more romanticized understanding, the studies revealed complex and multifaceted prototypes of organized crime across contexts. These findings have important implications for policy and communication strategies and serve as a catalyst for further research in this critical area.

Youth Gangs and overcoming waithood in a United Nations Protection of Civilians Site in South Sudan

ABSTRACT This article investigates contestations over the roles and legitimacy of gangs within the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) Protection of Civilians (PoC) site in Bentiu, South Sudan. Drawing on qualitative interviews, it argues that ‘gangs’ represented the medium through which everyday struggles and processes of social contestations were negotiated between youth, elders, and protection actors. Prevailing narratives of gangs as violent criminal entities structured conflict with elders and protection actors, but to their affiliates, gangs provided protection, identity, belonging, responsibility, agency, and a route to overcome the limbo of ‘waithood’ and achieve social adulthood.

Profiling the Management of Organised Crime: Evidence of a Qualitative Research

Abstract The current paper deals with a rarely studied subject in the Romanian academic field, that of developing a profile of organized crime entities. The aim of the paper is to present the findings of a qualitative indepth-interview based research that was designed (using 11 specific objectives and 15 interviews) to identify how criminal entities are organized in the sense of structure, communication, hierarchy levels, member recruitment etc. The qualitative research was applied to law enforcement employees, prosecutors (former and active ones) and active and former members of organized crime that can help achieve the research objectives. Being structured in several sections (literature review, research methodology, research findings, conclusions and discussions) the current article represents the first step in understanding the way criminal entities are being organized and if the organizational method and management style mach that of economic (legal organized) entities. The results of the research and using as backround the literature review, have generated several interesting future hypothesis regarding the organization of criminal entities that can and are being tested with the help of a quantitative research method in an attempt to identify the best methods and strategies that the law enforcement entities can use to combat illegal activities.

Criminal Governance and the Crisis of Contemporary Latin American States

Across Latin America, societies are confronting the rise of novel orders in which state officials and political authorities share power with criminal organizations. Criminal governance (i.e., the creation of rules regulating behavior by criminal entities often with the collaboration of state actors), as these arrangements have come to be known, poses significant challenges for democracy and the rule of law and often threatens peoples' enjoyment of fundamental rights. This article reviews the literature on state-criminal relations in Latin America by critically discussing conceptual and methodological issues. In so doing, it looks at three extant literatures that have contributed to enhancing our grasp of alternative forms of governance: studies on violence, works on stateness and the rule of law, and the literature on criminal governance. This article posits that those literatures have done a commendable job in describing and conceptualizing emerging forms of governance that deviate from traditional views. However, we also argue that these bodies of work operate in silos with little integration and display methodological biases and theoretical blind spots that weaken their overall analytical power. We also point out that much more work is needed to assess these new orders' consequences for existing political regimes and state institutions. In the conclusion, we propose concrete steps to strengthen research and foster a more integrated agenda and suggest future investigative avenues.

Learning the Language: Evolution of the FBI’s Linguist Program and Lessons Learned

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), although it is a domestically oriented intelligence service, must contend with foreign state, terrorist, and criminal entities. Foreign language capability is integral to countering many of these threat actors. The FBI has developed its foreign language workforce and associated infrastructure in response to the evolution of its mission. This was a learning process for the FBI and progressed from utilization of personnel who had language skills, or who were trained on an ad hoc basis, to establishing a dedicated workforce of linguists. This evolution highlights the need for organizations to assess needs and build toward workforces defined by subject matter expertise, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. As the FBI’s history in the field of language illustrates, expertise will eventually become a necessity. Workarounds, whether in language, information technology, or any other field, will only ultimately delay the development of capabilities.

Technology as a Tool for Transnational Organized Crime

Using technology to commit crimes is becoming much more prevalent. The internet has provided organized criminal entities anonymity and accessibility to criminal networks across the world to expand their illicit businesses. Technology is allowing for different organizations to co-exist and assist one another to achieve their goals. Organized crime entities are not only utilizing cyberspaces to communicate with networks across the globe but are also utilizing these spaces to aid in money laundering. Money laundering processes have begun to move online to better obscure assets in relation to criminal activity. Therefore, technology is creating a more dynamic and complex world to combat organized crime.

Unmasking Human Trafficking Risk in Commercial Sex Supply Chains with Machine Learning

The covert nature of sex trafficking provides a significant barrier to generating large-scale, data-driven insights to inform law enforcement, policy and social work. We leverage massive deep web data (collected globally from leading commercial sex websites) in tandem with a novel machine learning framework to unmask suspicious recruitment-to-sales pathways, thereby providing the first global network view of trafficking risk in commercial sex supply chains. This allows us to infer likely recruitment-to-sales trafficking routes of criminal entities, deceptive approaches used to recruit victims, and regional variations in recruitment vs. sales pressure. These insights can help law enforcement agencies along trafficking routes better coordinate efforts, as well as target local counter-trafficking policies and interventions towards exploitative behavior frequently exhibited in that region.

The Architecture of Illicit Nuclear Trafficking

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear trafficking in Russia and the former Soviet Republics has become an ever-prevalent threat for international security. This essay provides an assessment of the organisational structure of this transnational organised crime (TOC). Using the instrumental approach to network analysis and Bourdieu’s concept of social and human capital as a methodological framework, this essay investigates the nature of connections maintained among criminals during the various stages of the nuclear trafficking process – acquisition, transportation, sale – and contends that nuclear trafficking displays characteristics both of a stable hierarchy and a fluid network. Thus, it reaches the conclusion that TOC groups involved in this illicit activity present a hybrid form of organisational structure which is best described as a directed network – that is, a criminal entity with a stable group of organisers located at its core, and fluid nodes of individuals in charge of executing the different phases of the trafficking process at its periphery.

How to Understand the COVID 19 Epidemic Phenomenon?

The author discusses the mental barriers that are obstacles to understanding the phenomenon of COVID19 pandemic, and proposes a thesis that the crisis is not due to a new or a sudden mutation of a dangerous virus, but rather the collapse of our natural biological defences as we head into a civilizational cul-de-sac. The consequence is an attack by elements from within a biotope, which for millions of years had held within it viruses in many ways similar to that currently ravaging the planet. The popular perspective however is that of an alien, oriental, indeed criminal entity against which we must defend ourselves. However, the newest scientific research posits a different vision, which situates the virus in a biocenosis of which we are also a part. A balanced relationship had existed in which both man and virus formed a functional whole and in which biological mechanisms existed to create immunity (analogous to vaccination) up to the point where this relationship has been disrupted by man’s activities. The reduced resistance to infection of today’s children is symptomatic of this disruption as increasing susceptibility to infection appears to be in tandem with our civilisation as it continues its so -called progressive trajectory. We are now under attack from elements within our biocenosis with which we had been existing in a functional relationship for millions of years. In the evolutionary process viruses were assigned a regulatory function maintaining herd functionality through effecting the removal of aged and ailing units. The Sars2 Cov virus now performs this function killing those weaker aging or ailing members of our species and illustrates the reality of the 6th great species extinction as a part of the Anthropocene. The author treats COVID 19 as a factor accelerating human transformation to one in which cyborgization become a dominant trope of existence, affecting in the first instance human communities in which urbanisation and civilizational transformation is proceeding rapidly.

Perceptions of Pretrial Risk Assessment: An Examination Across Role in the Initial Pretrial Release Decision

Pretrial risk assessments are used to inform pretrial release decisions by judicial officers and criminal justice entities. Existing research indicates that negative perceptions of risk assessment can interfere with adherence to the tool. Although perception plays an important role in the implementation of pretrial risk assessment, little is known about what those involved in the initial pretrial release decision—including pretrial officers, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys—think about this practice. This study utilized a mixed-methods approach to examine the perceptions of pretrial risk assessment by practitioners and stakeholders across roles in the system. Furthermore, themes relevant to the perceived value of pretrial risk assessment are identified that pertain to the face validity of risk items and the reliability of self-reported information.

Mapping Connections and Cooperation between Terrorist and Criminal Entities

In recent years, terrorist groups intensified their cooperation with criminal entities or their independent engagement in criminal activities. But why and how, exactly, is cooperation with criminal actors beneficial for terrorist groups? And under which political and economic conditions are criminal and terrorist entities more inclined to cooperate or coordinate their operations? Despite the growing interest of academics and practitioners in the nexus of crime and terrorism, we are still unable to answer such questions authoritatively, and, in general, we are lacking in our understanding of the operational characteristics of these connections. The current study utilizes a global dataset of cases of cooperation between terrorist and criminal groups in order to try and answer some of these questions. Our findings indicate that both organizational and environmental factors can predict the likelihood of collaboration. More specifically, group structure, lifespan, ethnic/religious compatibility, geographical proximity, and the existence of criminal infrastructure are all associated with the tendency of criminal and terrorist groups to cooperate. Lastly, corporate and established terrorist groups are more inclined to engage in multiple low-end cooperation rather than high end.

A Study on the Current Theories of the Philosophy and Principles of Self-Defense

The self-defense entity is a legal phenomenon which is included in most countries' constitution in order to protect the people right when exposed to a current or potential danger or offense. The philosophy of acceptance of the self-defense is based on the theories of natural rights, social contract, the two-right conflict, and spiritual obligation. The self-defense has been justified based on several principles such as less harmful results, the possibility of blaming the offender, offending and attacking the defender's right to live, the offender's responsibility, the defender's right for removal and denial of threat. The legal systems each complying with the social and cultural conditions and status, beliefs, the traditions, and etc. try to develop the conditions of realization of self-defense in their constitution, however there are common areas and differences between the legal systems and determination of them plays an important role in justifying this entity. This criminal entity is among the justifiable factors of crime that in case of inclusion of its conditions, the defender will bear no criminal and civil responsibility.

Nuclear Smuggling and Threats to Lithuanian Security

The article explores threats related to illicit trafficking of radioactive materials and dual-use goods applicable in state level nuclear programs, actualizing the global trends for the Baltic region. The article points to Eastern Europe’s changing risk profile in this respect, as increasing penetration of Russian criminal groups inside Ukraine and the destabilized situations in neighboring countries create an environment where the risk of nuclear smuggling is on the rise. Criminal entities can be seen forming new bonds, with trafficking routes intersecting and zones of influence shifting – consequently, an unusual level of criminal involvement in nuclear smuggling is observed, alongside a geographic shift of smuggling patterns. In addition, states seeking materials and technologies for their military programs have taken a notable interest in this region as a way of circumventing international transit regulations. The article looks at the likely implications of these new nuclear smuggling trends for the security of the Baltic states. It suggests that Lithuania may soon be facing a relatively new threat, and one that it is ill-prepared to counter. The article discusses the risk factors and indicators to watch before that risk becomes reality, and offers ways for Lithuania to contribute to addressing these increasingly acute problems on a regional level.

Executive Summary: Recommendations for Criminal Justice and Community Agencies in Contact with Criminal Justice-Involved Veterans

Official statistics indicate that approximately 10% of incarcerated offenders are veterans. Increased attention has been paid to a distinct constellation of issues and needs in relation to military service and/or training (e.g., mental health, post-traumatic stress disorder, reintegration, substance abuse), which may increase the likelihood of contact with the criminal justice system. Individuals facing these challenges require specific services, but barriers to their access exist, including insurance coverage and stigmatization. With the increased awareness of the “invisible wounds of war,” practitioners have called for initiatives to: 1) improve public safety, including the safety of first responders and the veterans they are responding to 2) provide treatment focused responses 3) reduce recidivism (later contact with the criminal justice system).This summary reports the results from the first annual Justice Involved Veterans Stakeholder Summit that took place from November 9th through 11th of 2015 in Huntsville, Texas. The summit was organized by the Texas Veterans Commission, the Department of State Health Services, the Bell/Lampasas County Community Supervision and Corrections Department, and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in partnership with the Law Enforcement Management Institute and Correctional Management Institute of Texas at Sam Houston State University. Participants included of subject matter experts on veterans, mental health, and criminal justice issues and practitioner participants from all stages of the criminal justice system. All participants are listed at the end of this report.The Summit’s goal was to produce recommendations for strategies targeting veterans in contact with the criminal justice system specifically using the GAINS Center Sequential Intercept Model. This model focuses on partnerships between mental health and criminal justice entities and includes the five following intercepts:1) 911/Law Enforcement2) Initial Detention/Initial Court Hearings3) Jails/Specialty Courts4) Jail Reentry/Prison Reentry5) Community SupervisionThe practitioner participants were divided into five groups, one for each intercept, based on their roles in their institutions and agencies. The subject matter experts moved between groups and were called upon by groups to advise as needed.This report presents the problems, needs, barriers, and corresponding solutions collectively identified by the groups and subject matter experts. While the focus was on the State of Texas, these recommendations can be implemented by a wide variety of communities.

Infant Trafficking and Baby Factories: A New Tale of Child Abuse in Nigeria

Baby factories are new systematic abuse structures that are promoting infant trafficking, neo‐slavery and the exploitation of young women with unwanted pregnancies in Nigeria. Since this practice was first described in 2006, it has been growing rather than abating. This paper reviews the scientific literature, along with media reports, and critiques this phenomenon from a children's rights' perspective. Children born into baby factories are denied various civil rights. They also suffer abuse in the baby factories and as a consequence of being born in such places. This abuse can be classified into immediate and long term. Immediate abuse includes inadequate care and its repercussions, denial of birth registration, illegal adoption and murder. Long‐term or delayed abuse that they may be exposed to includes health‐related consequences, neglect, death, child labour, prostitution and other sexual abuse, organ trafficking and recruitment as child soldiers. Various factors are thought to drive the baby factory phenomenon which include poverty, high infertility rates and the profitability of local and inter‐country adoptions. Programmes directed at addressing the root cause of the problem are needed in order to eliminate infant trafficking. Also, clear laws that delineate inter‐country adoption and infant trafficking need to be enacted. Most importantly, baby factories need to be recognised as child trafficking routes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.‘New systematic abuse structures that are promoting infant trafficking, neo‐slavery and the exploitation of young women’Key Practitioner Messages: A new type of child abuse and human trafficking that targets infants has emerged in Nigeria in what are described as ‘baby factories’. Baby factories are criminal entities that exploit young girls with unwanted pregnancies and the practice is growing. Children born in baby factories suffer a range of immediate abuses and are exposed to long-term abuses. Baby factories violate several articles in the Convention on the Rights of a Child. ‘Criminal entities that exploit young girls with unwanted pregnancies’

Introduction: the Mexican cartels—organized crime vs. criminal insurgency

gativereportingbackgroundswithsomecurrently,orinthepast,engagedinoverlapping professional roles. The topic is of significance because these groups have developed from drug trafficking organizations to transnational criminal entities operating not only in Mexico but increasingly in Central America, throughout the United States, and in other regions of the Western hemisphere, West Africa, and Asia. It is important to understand this process and to remember that Mexico did not always have cartels. Since their initial appearance in the late 1980s, they have greatly evolved with the preferred narcotics route into the U.S. shifting from Southern Florida to over the U.S. border via Mexico and with the subsequent dismantling of the major cartels found in Colombia in the 1990s. Cartel evolution has been influenced by numerous factors ranging from intentional and unintentional governmental policies and second order effects, through changes in illicit market preferences and flows, to cartel mergers, infighting, and innovations. Typically, forgotten events that have directly impacted the rise of cartels include the torture killing of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in Mexico in 1985, U.S. counter-narcotics efforts spearheaded by the DEA to track down those responsible, and the initial establishment of the ‘plaza system’ by Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (“El Padrino”) in the 1987–1989 era as a defensive countermove against those efforts. The process of political transition in Mexico from an autocratic—seventy-year one party dominated system under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)—to a democratic multiparty system beginning in 2000 further greatly influenced cartel evolution. Under the PRI, the major cartels in Mexico, each with their assigned territories (plazas) remained subordinate to a state whose officials and elite families quietly profited from the illicit narcotics trade. This relationship with the state drastically changed with the election of two Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) administrations under Vincente Fox (2000–2006) and then Felipe Calderon (2006–1012).

Snakeheads, mules, and protective umbrellas: a review of current research on Chinese organized crime

China’s red-hot economy in recent decades has not only brought the country unprecedented wealth and political prominence in the world but also created ample opportunities for criminal enterprises to flourish. A review of recently published literature reveals that two types of transnational criminal activities – human smuggling and drug trafficking – received a fair amount of empirical attention in the research community. Other crimes, however, although carrying equally significant cross-national implications, have received scant attention. Thanks to a handful of empirical studies in recent years, the notion that traditional Chinese crime syndicates dominated transnational criminal activities has largely been dispelled. Most of those involved in transnational crimes (at least in human smuggling and drug trafficking) were found to be otherwise ordinary individuals who exploit their social or familial networks to take advantage of emerging opportunities. The criminal underworld in China appears to be growing along two separate tracks, with transnational organized crimes operating on one track and locally based criminal organizations on the other. Both groups of criminal entities are not known to cross paths in any systemic way. Research on Chinese organized crime (either locally based or transnational) has remained rather limited. Future research needs to emphasize empirical strategies to explore these and other pressing transnational criminal activities, as well as to solidify recent findings.

Organised crime and networking economy: models, features, dynamics and related approaches

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse more in depth the vision which is behind this formula of “organised crime” exploring to what extent it affects the interpretation and understanding of the phenomenon it designates, in its internal structure and relationships, its cause‐effect processes, and the answering strategies that have been developed in this regard. The differences that an alternative vision would entail for such answering strategies are discussed.Design/methodology/approachThe use of metaphors in the epistemic process is preliminarily explored, since it engenders a mode of thinking and of conceiving, which set the grounds of the way in which we understand things. The traditional notion of “organised (economic) crime” is considered comparatively with interactions between market players in their different shapes and formulas.FindingsThe vision on how financial crime dynamics crosses the financial system might have to be somewhat revisited. A different interpretation of the criminal world might give account of its structure and functioning processes and possibly also explaining some aspect that the former formula finds harder to clarify. Legal and illegal (or semi‐legal) services markets frequently overlap, especially in the ideal settings provided by grey economy, wherever and to whatever extent it exists.Research limitations/implicationsAn alternative vision is sketched and explored, which more extended research might further investigate and assess. According to such vision, what we often see as the assumption of specific roles within some organisations, or as an alliance among separate criminal entities, may appear in a market perspective just as a trade between the supply of specific illegal goods or services that may be offered by the various players present in the market, and a payment of some sort. The existence of the need, or opportunity, on part of the buyer or of the supplier is more decisive an element than the organisational factor for the transaction to occur. This is particularly crucial in the field of white collar crime, where both the product and the traders appear to be respectable in principle.Practical implicationsIf criminal phenomena follow more a market than an organisational model, the remedies will have to include transparency much more than control. Supervising free markets mainly means conditioning their routes, by opposing and removing the potential for illicit action and conditions or opportunities which may foster collusion between legal and less‐than‐legal segments, and by encouraging law‐abiding behaviour and information symmetry. Appropriate incentives may also introduce higher levels of transparency in the grey economy.Originality/valueIt is possible that the market perspective may allow better understanding of the underworld of illegal and criminal behaviour, and to deploy more effective action. In so far as the paper analysis is reasonably grounded, this appears to be the best way to achieve full effectiveness in the fight against organised crime and its pervasive threat.