Impact Of Organized Crime Research Articles

Entrepreneurship and organised crime: a systematic review and research agenda based on three decades of scholarship

PurposeScholarly interest in the business effects of organised crime (OC) has recently increased. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) on the conditions under which OC could pose a threat to or take control of firms within a particular context.Design/methodology/approachWe use narrative synthesis and thematic analysis, with a sample of 46 theoretical and empirical studies published over the past 30 years on the relationship between OC and firms within the disciplines of Business, Management and Accounting (BMA).FindingsSLR and thematic analysis show that scholarly interest has focused on four key domains: OC as a firm, the impact of OC on firms, firms’ efforts to counter OC’s influence and governmental interventions. Using medical metaphors, we also develop a diagram depicting the interplay between OC and firms within the BMA literature.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature shaping an agenda to steer future research towards these four key themes. The effectiveness of anti-OC tools and measures depends on a thorough understanding of local norms, behaviours and business practices. In addition to measurement and methodological challenges, several grey areas remain, including the distinction between criminal enterprises and legitimate businesses. Ambiguities also surround the circumstances under which the OC preys upon firms or employs them to establish dominance over a territory.

Economic impact of organised crime to state security

Organised crime is changing and becoming increasingly diverse in its methods, group structures and impact on society. This article aims to research, on the one hand, the impact of organized crime on state’s economy, on the other hand – to analyse the possible legal and economic measures tackling and preventing organized crime activities. The article contains results of the analysis of international, regional and national legal acts and the secondary analysis of statistical data of European Union agencies and international organizations. The author used a variety of methods: from selection and analysis of primary and secondary sources to descriptive, comparative and synthesis methods. Such analysis required multitudinous, broad and diverse base of empirical data, which were collected from the international, regional, national organizations and agencies, as well as scientific, operational and theoretical reports related to the issue of organised crime and impact of this phenomenon to the state and the society.

An overview of the effects of organized crime on southern Africa

[enter Abstract Body]Organized crime within and across the Southern Africa borders constitute a threat to regional peace, security and governance in the region. Organized crime such as drug trafficking, human trafficking/smuggling, stolen vehicle trafficking, illegal weapons trade, money laundering, illicit exploitation of natural resources, trafficking in counterfeit medication and cigarettes, and cybercrime continue to exact a high cost in terms of national and transnational security and governance as a result of the strong link between political and sector corruption. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the nature and impact of organized crime on regional peace and security and governance within the southern Africa region, and offers several recommendations such as effective policing across borders, enthronement of good governance and democratic principles and strengthening the capacity of legal instruments and agencies to control organized crimes within the region.

Breaking the Ties between the Mafia and the State: Evidence from Italian Municipalities

The impact of organized crime on local economies is inherently hard to measure due to the lack of exogenous variation in criminal activity and data quality. I address these challenges by exploiting the timing of the dismissal of public elected officials in Italian municipalities (when the city council is found to be infiltrated by mafia) as a source of plausibly exogenous variation, and by combining this approach with the use of large administrative datasets. I document that the three external commissioners temporarily cut public investment and public procurement. I find that connected firms experience a sharp reduction in the probability of winning a call for bidders after the takeover. Higher exit rates and the lower number of public procurement contracts awarded only partially explain this sharp drop; overall my findings are consistent with stigma being associated to connected firms and lasting longer than takeover itself. I do not find any evidence that this policy negatively impacts local formal businesses and workers. More specifically, I find suggestive evidence of more churning in the economy, and I do not detect any negative consequences for local workers in terms of employment.

Cyberspace as the Environment Affected by Organized Crime Activity

IntroductionAs society develops, a broad range of types of crime is emerging, encompassing both individual and organized crime. Criminal methods, and the ways in which crime is organized, are directly related to the technological development of society. For this reason, crime is evolving and is increasingly shifting its activity to cyberspace, progressing hand-in-hand with the development of information and communication technologies (ICT), as used in the realm of cyberspace, which is a widely understood concept. This applies both to individual crimes and, increasingly, to organized crime as well. Cyberspace has become the perfect environment for committing crimes as well as for enabling new ways in which to run organized crime and manage new forms of competition for influence. This mainly occurs with regard to the impact of information, both on enemy criminal organizations (competing with each other) and on governments and international institutions combating organized crime. Interactions of this nature bear the hallmarks of a conflict or war for influence conducted in cyberspace, aimed at creating a positive image of a criminal organization, misleading the institutions combating crime and destroying potential competition - and all via the means of information interaction. The scale of this phenomenon will grow as the information society develops and interaction with it will take a variety of forms, both logical and kinetic.Therefore, it is critically important to identify the forms, methods and impact of organized crime in cyberspace, as well as ways to combat it. There will be conflicts in cyberspace, bearing the hallmarks of war, and characterized by asymmetrically weighted opponents, unlimited reach, unknown consequences, and unidentified objectives on the part of the rival.Conflicts in cyberspace will differ in character from the well-known conflicts of the past. This follows the commonly used saying that every age has its own war, consistent with the level of technological and social development. Indeed, this can be observed in the ways in which war is conducted and the measures which are taken during that war. Access to information stored, processed and transmitted via cyberspace has given society a new quality of life, making possible various social functions that were mere star-gazing and fantasy in the nottoo-distant past. It manifests itself not only in the rapid development of society, but also has a considerable economic dimension, as shown by the reduction in the cost of the functioning of society while accelerating the implementation of this functioning.On the one hand, these technologies enable the development of new social forms while, on the other, they raise legitimate concerns regarding their use. The best examples of the impact of modern technology on the functioning of society include the Internet blocks put in place in Estonia in 2007 and in Georgia in 2008. This new dimension, namely, cyberspace, will have a huge impact on the functioning of society, the course of future conflicts and the ways in which organized crime functions. The scope and impact of the competition are mere estimates, based on the above-mentioned examples.The primary aim of this article is to identify possible ways in which organized crime interacts and competes in cyberspace as well as ways in which it can be combated by governments and international institutions.In terms of the activities of organized crime and its impact on global society, it is important to identify the nature of contemporary conflicts and define the very essence of war because the cyberspace activities of organized criminal groups bear the specific hallmarks of a war for influence and profit maximization. The war itself, as a social phenomenon, in the present terms, is difficult to define. It consists of various factors related to, among other things, the incredible acceleration of global economic development, population growth, and political changes in the international arena. …

Organized crime, extortion and entrepreneurship under uncertainty

This article investigates the impact of organized crime (OC) on economic activity in conditions of dynamic uncertainty. It shows that the hypothesis of rationality does not imply a one to one correspondence between illegal behavior and expected benefits and costs of the criminal action, since two different regimes may ensue from the threat of racketeering. These two regimes will be respectively characterized by acquiescence and no private protection activities, and by optimal private protection that will push OC into a zone of inaction. The latter outcome will correspond to a Stackelberg equilibrium of a preventive type in the sense that the action of the firm as a leader will confine OC in a zone of temporary inaction. Since the extent to which private protection will succeed in deterring the criminal is lower the higher is uncertainty, and the higher are public protection activities, switching from one regime to the other may thus be determined even by small changes in uncertainty or public protection. If public protection is below a critical level, the threat of extortion also creates incentives for the firm to enter an agreement with the criminal, by negotiating an acceptable rate of extortion. At the same time, however, higher public protection will favor a better deal for the victim in such a negotiation.

The Effect of Organized Crime on Public Funds

Organized crime is widely regarded as damaging to the economy, to say nothing of people’s lives. Yet little is known about the mechanism at work. This paper helps fill the gap by analyzing the impact of organized crime on the allocation of public subsidies to businesses. We assemble an innovative data set on Italian mafia crimes at municipal level and test whether organized crime diverts public funding. We exploit exogenous variations at the level of municipalities to instrument current mafia-style activity by using exogenous shifters of land productivity in the 19th century. Our results show that the presence of organized crime positively affects both the extensive margin (probability of funding) and the intensive margin (amount of public funding to enterprises). The impact is economically relevant and equal to at least one standard deviation of the dependent variable. Organized crime is also found to cause episodes of corruption in the public administration. A series of robustness checks confirm the findings. Our results suggest that geographically targeted aid policies should be careful to take local crime conditions into account.

Casino Politics, Organized Crime and the Post-Colonial State in Macau

Organized crime and politics have been traditionally intertwined in Macau. During the colonial era, the Portuguese administration was characterized by bureaucratic corruption and a cozy relationship with casino capitalists. The colonial state had limited autonomy vis-à-vis the casino capitalists. With the growth of tourism and the associated casino industry in Macau during the 1990s, organized crime groups penetrated various casinos and emerged as a baffling problem. Yet, neither the Portuguese administration nor the casino capitalists had the capability to contain the use of violence by organized crime groups. As Macau approached the end of the Portuguese colonial rule, the People's Republic of China (PRC) decided to intervene in the rapidly deteriorating law and order. The Chinese intervention took the forms of stationing the People's Liberation Army in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), penalizing the triad boss Wan Kuok-kuoi, and supporting the new Edmund Ho Government's attempts at civil service reforms. The SAR Government also liberalized the casino industry by embracing American investment. Due to market competition, the local casino capitalists have been forced to improve the management of casinos and to minimize the infiltration of triads. Unlike the colonial state, the post-colonial state in the Macau SAR has enhanced its relative autonomy vis-à-vis the local casino capitalists, directly or indirectly curbing the detrimental impact of organized crime. The case study of Macau is illustrative of the critical role of state autonomy vis-à-vis casino capitalists, whose previous monopoly over casino management encountered the infiltration of organized crime that grasped the opportunities for maximizing profits in the era of the rapidly expanding casino industry. The Macau example also demonstrates the city-state's use of market competition as a means to improve casino management and to contain the spread of organized crime at least in the short run.

Media coverage of organized crime—police managers survey

This brief presentation notes how the lack of clarity of what exactly is meant by “organized crime” as it is evolving, and particularly its transnational dimensions, can create problems and confusion for police and community alike. The role of the media is of particular significance in determining how both police and citizens perceive the scope and impact of organized crime. This in turn has implications for operations, priorities, and so on. The need to address a number of important areas that limit police effectiveness in countering organized crime, such as cooperation and sharing, appropriate resources, and measures of effectiveness, is also noted.

Organized crime: Changing concepts and realities for the police

This brief presentation notes how the lack of clarity of what exactly is meant by “organized crime” as it is evolving, and particularly its transnational dimensions, can create problems and confusion for police and community alike. The role of the media is of particular significance in determining how both police and citizens perceive the scope and impact of organized crime. This in turn has implications for operations, priorities, and so on. The need to address a number of important areas that limit police effectiveness in countering organized crime, such as cooperation and sharing, appropriate resources, and measures of effectiveness, is also noted.