Drug Trafficking Organizations Research Articles

Performing humanitarian militarism

This article investigates a case in which the Brazilian military, according to national press, “invaded” and “occupied” a Rio de Janeiro favela neighborhood under the auspices of a public security program. Rio’s “pacification” program aims to replace drug trafficking organizations’ control of favelas with Pacifying Police Units and counts on the occasional participation of the military. Based on research with military personnel and favela residents, I investigate the construction and consequences of the pairing of militarism with humanitarianism. I show how these logics are not opposed, as they might at first sound, but in practice, deeply aligned. Among other reasons, both state force and state caregiving are performances to justify military presence on the streets to audiences in and outside the favela. The visible spectacle of humanitarian militarism effaces abuses and makes light of the everyday fears and insecurities suffered by the urban poor.

Los Zetas and Proprietary Radio Network Development

The years from 2006 through 2011 were very active years for a number of Mexican drug trafficking organizations. However, the group that probably saw the most meteoric rise in this period, Los Zetas, had a unique and innovative tool at their disposal. It was during these years that the group constructed and utilized a proprietary encrypted radio network that grew to span from Texas to Guatemala through the Gulf States of Mexico and across much of the rest of the country. This network gave the group an operational edge. It also stood as a symbol of the latitude the group enjoyed across vast areas, as this extensive illicit infrastructure stood, in the face of the government and rival cartels, for six years. This investigation explicates the process by which Los Zetas constructed, concealed and utilized this network and attempts to draw conclusions about the motivations and organizational dynamics that brought the network to be, with attention paid to what this case says about the complex engineering capabilities of nonstate entities in general. Disclaimer Editor’s Note: This article forms part of a series of related case studies collected in this Special Issue and should be viewed in the context of the broader phenomenon of complex engineering by violent non-state actors. Readers are advised to consult the introductory and concluding papers for a full explanation and comparative analysis of the cases. Acknowledgements This work was supported by Sandia National Laboratories, Contract #1525332. Any opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations in this issue are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of Sandia National Laboratories or the U.S. Department of Energy. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol9/iss1/7

Income inequality and violent crime: Evidence from Mexico's drug war

The goal of this paper is to examine the effect of inequality on crime rates in a unique context, Mexico's drug war. The analysis exploits an original dataset containing inequality and crime statistics on more than 2000 Mexican municipalities over a 20-year period. To uncover the causal effect of inequality on crime, we use an instrumental variable for the Gini coefficient that combines the initial income distribution at the municipality level with national trends. Our estimates indicate that a one-point increment in the Gini coefficient between 2007 and 2010 translates into an increase of more that 36% in the number of drug-related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The fact that the effect found during the drug war is substantially greater is likely caused by the rise in rents to be extracted through crime and an expansion in the employment opportunities in the illegal sector through the proliferation of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), accompanied by a decline in legal job opportunities and a reduction in the probability of being caught given the resource constraints faced by the law enforcement system. Combined, the latter factors made the expected benefits of criminal activity shift in a socially undesirable direction after 2007.Sector Board: Poverty (POV)

Stan rozpoznania zorganizowanych grup przestępczych z udziałem cudzoziemców w Polsce

The paper offers a synthetic insight into the activities of organized crime groups in Poland with foreign nationals as their members. All the relevant data were obtained from the staff officers of the Central Bureau of Police Investigation (CBSP), i.e. directly from the operatives involved in investigating such criminal structures. The interviews were conducted in February 2015, with the three officers serving in the three departments combating: organized crime, organized drug trafficking, and organized fraud, respectively. On the basis of those interviews, it was established that the structures of interest are formed either exclusively by foreign nationals, or by foreign nationals in association with their Polish peers. Some groups might be characterised by specific traits, e.g. organisational tightness, or excessive brutality. Some insight was also gained into the ways of recruitment to the organized crime groups involving foreigners, i.e. diversified ways of recruitment to the structures of different specialisations (crime, drugs, fraud). In due course, the most frequently committed types of criminal offences were identified, i.e. theft, drug production and trafficking, cigarette smuggling, VAT fraud, and money laundering. The study highlights the ‘attractiveness’ of particular offences to respective organized crime groups. It was also possible to gain an understanding of their modus operandi and organizational structuring (be that complex or simple), including consideration for their own security (i.e. making expert use of the most recent advances of modern technology and personal training and vigilance). The research allowed to establish the specific ways of managing the proceeds derived from the committed offences, in due consideration of the respective nationality of their members. A certain proportion of the crime structures consumed the proceeds, others made investments and promoted business development, still others transferred the funds to their home countries. The study revealed that well-organized groups were active in Poland, whereas the highly-organized ones also ventured abroad with their operations, whilst making use of their international contacts with a view to establishing collaboration with some other internationally structured groups in order to promote business development and maximize their illicit revenues. The interviews revealed that police investigators manage to keep very much abreast of the activities pursued by internationally structured, organized crime groups in Poland.

Drug Trafficking Organizations and Local Economic Activity in Mexico.

Little is known about the relationship between illegal firms and local economic activity. In this paper I study changes in satellite night lights across Mexican municipalities after the arrival of large drug trafficking organizations in the period 2000–2010. After accounting for state trends and differences in political regimes, results indicate no significant change in night lights after the arrival of these illegal firms. Estimated coefficients are precise, robust, and similar across different drug trafficking organizations.

Classifying the Variety of Drug Trafficking Organizations

A standard typology of drug trafficking organizations would assist in interpreting the results of studies made of these organizations. Several such typologies have been proposed, and this study examines a widely cited typology that was developed in the 1990s using New York City court data. The typology has two dimensions, organizational tasks and structure. It satisfactorily encompassed the trafficking organizations identified in two new samples: 39 organizations prosecuted in New York City in 1997-2007 and 50 organizations prosecuted during the same period by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The findings supported the generalizability of the typology. They also suggest that drug trafficking organizations adopt a structure congruent with their external environment, including the market for drugs, the type of drugs, ethnicity of those involved in distribution, use of technology in communication and distribution, and levels of law enforcement. Implications of fuller knowledge about the structure and functioning of drug trafficking organizations for research and policy are discussed.

Drugs, gangs and vigilantes: How to tackle the new breeds of Mexican armed violence

Since 2007 Mexico has experienced a steady increase in lethal and non-lethal forms of violence, including kidnappings, extortion, extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances. This spiral of violence has been driven by the consolidation and expansion of non-conventional armed actors operating in an institutional and political climate characterised by pervasive levels of corruption, impunity and criminal collusion. Public indignation over this state of affairs reached a high after the disappearance of 43 trainee teachers in the town of Iguala in September 2014. This report analyses the objectives, structures and impact of non-conventional armed actors in Mexico, focusing on drug-trafficking organisations, street gangs and so-called self-defence forces. It examines the pitfalls and lessons learned from the country’s past and present security strategies, and lays out the basis for an alternative approach to understanding and tackling non-conventional armed violence. Based on a careful analysis of the dynamic and hybrid character of these groups, the report argues for an approach that prioritises the fight against corruption and the protection of embattled communities through localised prevention, geographic sequencing and knowledge-based policing.

The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico

In 2006, the Mexican government launched an aggressive campaign to weaken drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). The security policies differed significantly from those of previous administrations in the use of a leadership strategy (the targeting for arrest of the highest levels or core leadership of criminal networks). While these strategies can play an important role in disrupting the targeted criminal organization, they can also have unintended consequences, increasing inter-cartel and intra-cartel fighting and fragmenting criminal organizations. What impact do captures of senior drug cartel members have on the dynamics of drug-related violence? Does it matter if governments target drug kingpins versus lower-ranked lieutenants? We analyze whether the captures or killings of kingpins and lieutenants have increased drug-related violence and whether the violence spills over spatially. To estimate effects that are credibly causal, we use different empirical strategies that combine difference-in-differences and synthetic control group methods. We find evidence that captures or killings of drug cartel leaders have exacerbating effects not only on DTO-related violence but also on homicides that affect the general population. Captures or killings of lieutenants, for their part, only seem to exacerbate violence in “strategic places” or municipalities located in the transportation network. While most of the effects on DTO-related violence are found in the first six months after a leader’s removal, effects on homicides affecting the rest of the population are more enduring, suggesting different mechanisms through which leadership neutralizations breed violence.

How Does Leadership Decapitation Affect Violence? The Case of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico

Many governments target leaders of violent groups, but consequences of this strategy are unclear. Additionally, most studies examine political groups such as terrorists, ignoring criminal organizations—even though they can represent serious threats to security. This article presents a theoretical framework for how political and criminal groups differ and uses the framework to explain how group type should condition leadership removal’s effects. Decapitation should weaken criminal organizations, temporarily reducing violence. However, as groups fragment and newer groups emerge to address market demands, violence increases in the longer term. Empirical analysis using original data on Mexican criminal organizations generally supports the argument. Interestingly, the short-term violence reduction is only associated with leaders arrested (not killed) and when the target is a midlevel leader as opposed to the top leader. These results differ markedly from those found in studies of political groups.1

Drugs Around the Corner: Domestic Drug Markets and Violence in Colombia and Mexico

AbstractOver the past decade, drug consumption has increased in Colombia and Mexico, countries traditionally concerned with drug production and trafficking. Governments and observers have associated this growth with spikes in violence. Drawing on drug consumption surveys and fieldwork in four cities, this study argues that contrary to this perception, there is no automatic connection between domestic drug markets and violence. Violence depends on whether large drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) control low-level street dealers and on whether those DTOs have a market monopoly at the local level. When dealers are independent, violence might be sporadic, but when DTOs control dealers, violence can explode (given competition between DTOs) or implode (if one organization holds a monopoly). Control over dealers provides DTOs not only income but also informants and armed muscle. This article also shows that domestic drug markets are not new, and have grown incrementally in the past two decades.

The Impact of Drug Trafficking on Informal Security Actors in Kenya

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.

A Tale of Two Mexican Border Cities: The Rise and Decline of Drug Violence in Juárez and Tijuana

This paper examines the tale of the two cities, Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana. These two municipalities are the largest of Mexico's metropolises along the country's roughly 2,000-mile frontier with the United States, the longest land border between the “global north” and the “global south.” This narrative builds on several years of research regarding Mexico's rule of law challenges, during which the author conducted multiple field research trips to both Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana. By virtue of their status as border cities, both lie at the fringes of the state and the very limits of its coercive monopoly on force. Consequentially, these are two cities that also stand at the frontiers of globalization, thanks to the opening of trade, new technologies, and infrastructure that has expanded flows of commerce, capital, and people across the US–Mexican border. This article examines the factors that contributed to the eruption of enormous violence in both cities around 2008, and the factors that contributed to its gradual reduction in both places. The author explains that the socio-economic context in these two border cities has deprived individuals of educational and employment opportunities, while the international market for illicit drugs has helped to fill the gap. Ultimately, though, the author argues that violence among drug trafficking organizations resulted from splits and the breakdown of alliances attributable to dynamics within and among these organizations, as well as newfound pressures from US and Mexican law enforcement. The author contends that the reduction of violence can be attributed to the gradual monopolization of control over organized criminal activities by the Sinaloa cartel.

Corruption in El Salvador: Politicians, Police, and Transportistas

Corruption and the infiltration of public institutions in Central America by organized crime groups is an unaddressed issue that lies at the core of the increasing violence and democratic instability that has afflicted the region in the last decade. In El Salvador, infiltration has mutated into a system capable of determining important political and strategic decisions, such as the election of high-level judicial officials and the shaping of the state approach to fighting crime. This paper addresses corruption in El Salvador’s National Civil Police (PNC), the law enforcement agency created under the auspices of the 1992 Peace Accord that ended the country’s 12-year civil war. Archival and field research presented here demonstrates that the PNC has been plagued by its own “original sin”: the inclusion of former soldiers that worked with criminal groups and preserved a closed power structure that prevented any authority from investigating them for over two decades. This original sin has allowed criminal bands formed in the 1980s as weapon or drug smugglers to forge connections with the PNC and to develop into sophisticated drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). These new DTOs are now involved in money laundering, have secured pacts with major criminal players in the region — such as Mexican and Colombian cartels — and have learned how to use the formal economy and financial system. These “entrepreneurs” of crime, long tolerated and nurtured by law enforcement officials and politicians in El Salvador, are now major regional players themselves.

Tom Barker (ed): North American Criminal Gangs: Street, Prison, Outlaw Motorcycle, and Drug Trafficking Organizations

Tom Barker (ed): North American Criminal Gangs: Street, Prison, Outlaw Motorcycle, and Drug Trafficking Organizations

The Impact of Leadership Removal on Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations

Objectives Has the Mexican government’s policy of removing drug-trafficking organization (DTO) leaders reduced or increased violence? In the first 4 years of the Calderon administration, over 34,000 drug-related murders were committed. In response, the Mexican government captured or killed 25 DTO leaders. This study analyzes changes in violence (drug-related murders) that followed those leadership removals.

En

Transnational organized crime (TOC), such as drug trafficking, has been a sustained problem for society because of the visible impact on drug abuse that is evident in media coverage. However, research on the development of drug trafficking organizations through clandestine social networks has been limited. Consequently, this study applies Social Network Theory to significant aspects of drug trafficking—business economics and social networks inside drug trafficking groups. The analysis identifies similarities between the legal business and criminal organizations that can lead to favorable methods of criminal justice intervention.

Contemporary security challenges in Mexico: Connection between the state and drug cartels

Crime and violence pose a serious challenge to Mexico. The problem appears to be growing worse, with 2011 on pace to become the most violent year on record. The rising violence in Mexico has resulted in a sharply heightened sense of fear among citizens, who now feel the presence of cartels in their every day lives. The use of extortion and kidnapping by cartels combined with a lack of trust in security forces terrorizes the population and makes them feel like they have no where to turn. Despite this fact, crime rates in Mexico remain lower than in other parts of Latin America. Venezuela, for example, has among the highest homicide rates in the world. Yet the pervasive infiltration of cartels into public life gives Mexicans a heightened sense of the severity of violent crime in their own country. Although accurate statistics are hard to come by, it is quite possible that 60,000 people have died in the last six-plus years as a result of armed conflict between the Mexican cartels and the Mexican government, amongst cartels fighting each other, and as a result of cartels targeting citizens. Mexico has been struggling with drug production and drug transit through its territory from South America to the U.S. for many decades, given the fact that it is the most important transit country for drug production originating from South America. In recent years, the escalating violence in Mexico has led to dramatic deterioration of the security situation. Recent wave of drug-war violence is associated with the beginning of the term of President Felipe Calderon in December 2006. The immediate implications of his assumption of the presidency and his hard-line policy, which he has applied against drug cartels and organized criminal groups across the country, were the deployment of Mexican army to fight cartels and the gradual weakening of the influence of local and state police at the expense of federal troops. This was done in order to combat corruption and collaboration of local law-enforcement institutions with drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). The consequence of such a policy, however, has been increased violence among rival cartels and between them and the federal police and military, resulting in a dramatic increase of the number of victims. The future of US-Mexican counter drug cooperation, as well as of the whole bilateral relation in the area of security, depends on the outcome of US presidential elections. As for Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto takes the office on December 1, 2012 that will mark a comeback of his party PRI after 12 years in opposition. As far as the security strategy of the future Mexican President is concerned, there are no significant changes to be expected. Pena Nieto seems to be aware of the current situation and its consequences as well as of the inevitability of an extremely close and dynamic mutual cooperation with the US.

Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime

We examine the effect of medical marijuana laws (MML) on crime treating the introduction of MML as a quasi-experiment and using three different data sources. First, using data from the Uniform Crime Reports, we find that violent crimes such as homicides and robberies decrease in states that border Mexico after MML are introduced. Second, using Supplementary Homicide Reports' data we show that for homicides the decrease is the result of a drop in drug-law, felony and juvenile-gang related homicides, while other homicides remain unaffected. Lastly, using STRIDE data, we show that the introduction of MML in Mexican border states decreases the amount of cocaine seized, while it increases the price of cocaine. Our results survive a large variety of robustness checks. We interpret our results as evidence that decriminalization of small-scale production and distribution of marijuana cripples Mexican drug trafficking organizations, whose revenues are highly reliant on marijuana. The introduction of MML in Mexican border states lead to a decrease in their activity, which resulted in a drop in drug-related violent crime and drug trafficking. Extrapolating, our results indicate that decriminalization of the production and distribution of drugs may lead to a drop in violence in markets where organized crime is pushed out by licit competition.

Why They Join, Why They Fight, and Why They Leave: Learning From Colombia's Database of Demobilized Militants

For nearly ten years the Colombian government has systematically debriefed men and women who have left the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other violent extremist organizations. Today, the Colombian government maintains a database of more than 15,000 digitized interview transcripts—the largest of its kind in the world. With the proper enhancements and analysis, the database can provide critical insights into topics such as extremist recruitment, motivation, information operations, intelligence activities, leadership, and tactical and operational adaptation and innovation. Although Colombia's political violence is unique in many respects, further research using the database contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of insurgency in other regions. Ultimately, this research could enhance efforts to prevent recruitment into, and encourage current members to exit from violent non-state groups, such as gangs, terrorist groups, militias, and drug trafficking organizations.

The relationship between Mexican drug trafficking organizations and corruption in the Mexican criminal justice and political systems: a review essay

This research addresses the implications associated with the illegal activities performed by drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and the impact it creates on governmental institutions. The study focuses on México, the war on drugs, and the ramifications produced as a result of President Calderon’s strategy to combat drug trafficking and implement change. A description of different DTOs with their operations and illegal activities is also provided. The investigation outlines major implications of corruption from Mexican law enforcement, politicians, and other government officials that have been involved in cases of corruption and their link to DTOs. The research also expresses the implications created by Operation Fast and Furious conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF). An analysis is provided to consider the right to bear arms in México, and evaluation of President Calderon’s strategy to combat DTOs and organized crime is also described. Such strategy is analyzed and compared to the Systematic Approach to Program and Policy Development, a model for planned change presented by the criminal justice policy and planning commission.