Transantional Crime - Assignment Example

Transnational Crime Take Home Exam Identify at least 4 of the factors shaping transnational crime and present how each contributes to (i) the proliferation of transnational crime and (ii) how it relates to national security. Which one(s) do you think is/are the strongest contributor? Give evidence and rationale to support your claim? There are numerous factors that facilitate transnational crimes such as liberalization, technology, the Internet, and globalization. The first major factor is liberalization. By relaxing controls on global operations, economic liberalization has significantly weakened motivations to smuggle legal products, and thus hindered transnational crime. Simultaneously, liberalization has involuntarily promoted and helped those sectors of the international economy that are still illegal. The objective of liberalization is to enhance innovation, competitiveness, and sensitivity to market indicators; though, several of the highly established indicators originate from illicit markets (Madsen, 2009). Liberalization also weakens the capability of the state to deal with outside market forces, and the massive international demand for several illegal products is included. Basically, liberalization and an increasingly borderless world has certainly promoted and enabled criminalized sectors of the international economy. For instance, social problems caused by economic changes in Mexico have created the incentive for greater marijuana and opium agriculture as well as additional buyers for migrant smugglers. Likewise, economic liberalization has significantly facilitated money laundering, while operations such as tax pardons on deported capital draw legal investment but also motivate launderers (Banerjee, 2007). Similarly, the increase in cross-border movement stemming from free trade policies has made circumstances more and more open to smugglers who hide their commodities among legal ones. Therefore, liberalization has the capacity to raise and endanger national security in new, complicated, and usually synchronized ways. The international issue of human trafficking demonstrates this complex nature of the human security model and its multifaceted association with the quest for national security (Okubo & Shelley, 2011). More than a fundamental problem of transnational crime, the global trade in human beings is suggestive of the possibility of serious conflicts between safeguarding the security of human beings and that of states. The second major factor is the Internet. Improved communications in a borderless world has enabled the progress of transnational crime. The growth of the Internet has had a tremendous effect, as organized crime organizations in Russia and India are capable of purchasing and selling women with the convenience and easiness of the World Wide Web. In the nations of the previous USSR, a large number of websites are present, advertising sex tourism and brides, especially in Asia and Latin America (Naim, 2005). Such operations are enabled by firmly established organized crime groups in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Essentially, the development of modern communication, and specifically the Internet, is a vital feature of contemporary criminal activities. Such crime is usually transnational, due to the core nature of the Internet (Albanese, 2011). An example of this so-called ‘cyber-delinquency’ is ‘e-fencing’. Organized ‘fencing’ is now a widespread crime within the domain of cyber-delinquency, specifically where auction sites on the Internet are being exploited by expert retail offenders to deposit smuggled commodities. Several governments, especially the United States, are formulating techniques to stop the spread of such crime and the increasing intensity of fund-raising operation, communication, and online recruitment of non-state entities (Madsen, 2009). Because the Internet is mainly in the private domain, cooperation between public and private sectors are required to identify exploitation of the Internet by transnational crime groups. The third major factor is globalization. Globalization refers to the cross-border relationships between nations as witnessed through greater movements between people, ideas, and information or the mechanism of abolishing government controls so as to form an open, free global economy. Because of globalization transnational criminals are given greater opportunity to defy states. Transnational crime groups take advantage of the rapid technological development, movement of commodities and people through the Internet while exploiting the absence of global cooperation between nations and various legal structures between nations to continuously weaken states’ attempt to hinder their illegal activities (Glenny, 2009). Transnational crime groups have been one of the leading recipients of globalization. Globalization makes international trade possible but also raises the complexity of regulating it; smugglers and traffickers have taken advantage of this. Global criminal drug trade is one of the primary recipients in the global illicit economy. The fourth factor is technology. Technology is progressing to bring convenience to consumers. However, even though it can be used beneficially like the application of the Global Positioning System (GPS) to identify someone’s location, it can also be used for illegal operations. Mobile phones have been exploited by terrorists to develop, strategize, and synchronize their operations abroad (Madsen, 2009). The Internet has been the channel exploited to draw people toward child pornography and illegal drugs. On November 19, 2003, a Chinese woman was imprisoned in Singapore after trading Ephedrine drugs via the Yahoo auction site (Madsen, 2009). Although arrests of transnational criminals show the success of law enforcement, the arrest of the female Chinese drug dealer is one of a kind. Normally, numerous are unreported and undetected. In a sector that is not fond of transparency the mere information that is accessible is through government arrests and statements. Therefore, globalization and technology are the strongest contributors of transnational crime. Transnational crime groups are acquainted with the rapid dissemination of technological development into other sectors. Indeed, due to its tremendous economic capability, major criminal organizations have quicker and more capable access to technological assets than the ordinary groups skilled in the arena (Albanese, 2011). It is general knowledge, for example, their capacity to obtain and use any form of new technology. This development is particularly important as regards drugs, as has been manifested by the diffusion of new narcotic drugs, in weapon production and in the counterfeiting of all kinds of commodities. Furthermore, transnational crime groups’ access to new communication technology is attained faster than the security agencies tasked to hunt these criminal groups, the becoming less susceptible to state control. One of the examples is the 419 scam which has exploited traditional mail and fax, and is currently operated through the Internet. This scam normally starts with an email or message, allegedly sent to a specific addressee but in fact sent to numerous recipients, presenting an offer that would apparently lead to a huge payment for the victim (Glenny, 2009). The surplus of resources and a setting where enormous consumption occurs within the framework of industrialized nations have formed new leisure prospects attended by a growth in illegal commodities. (2) Attention has been placed on how we identify transnational crime groups as well as the nature of their organizational structure. Why is this important? Discuss and present various organizational structures that organized crime groups can take. For each of the organizational structure types, specify the strengths and weaknesses for the operation of the group and identify what this means for government if they are to be effective in targeting them. A transnational crime of any imposing kind will require some extent of structure or organization. Human trafficking can be conducted by means of unstructured low-level connections, or vastly organized global networks. Small groups could consist of family contacts or be linked through common ethnicity, whereas bigger criminal networks could maneuver globally and supervise the whole operation from the recruitment through the victimization process (Liddick, 2004). Different crime groups have different organizational structures. Their organizational structures can provide information on how operations are planned, coordinated, and carried out. For example, it has been widely documented that the more hierarchical the organization is, the more expected it is to wreak havoc as an important component in carrying out their operations. Moreover, greater structural inflexibility has also been proven to relate to greater tendency toward trans-border operations and corruption (Naim, 2005). There are five distinct forms of organized crime groups recognized by the United Nations based on their organizational structures (Albanese, 2011): (1) rigid hierarchy; (2) devolved hierarchy; (3) hierarchical conglomerate; (4) core criminal group; and (5) organized criminal network. Rigid hierarchy is characterize by a single superior, units giving information, updates, and reports to the center, with a firm practice of discipline. Large, solid and rigidly hierarchical organized crime groups are easily targeted by security forces. The outcomes of such operations indicate that criminal enterprises are currently supplanting a centralized system, usually with no transnational features, with more decentralized and adaptable attributes. The present-day pattern appears to be heading toward the formation of small groups rooted in shared beliefs and mutual agreements, and with quite limited protocols, making them flexible or responsive to new market factors so that they can capitalize on the profits coming from new business prospects and reduce their defenselessness to security forces. An example of a rigidly hierarchical group is the Cosa Nostra—a criminal group in Sicily, Italy—which is engaged in all forms of criminal operation, such as corruption, assassination, money laundering, labor fraud, and drug trafficking (Shanty & Mishra, 2008). It no longer seems to be the leading criminal group because it has a traditional, rigid, and large structure that barely adjusts to the market’s flexibility. Devolved hierarchy refers to local structures with specific leadership system and self-government. Organized crime groups can apply a rigid hierarchy such as the Japanese Yakuza. Trafficking groups can be controlled by only one boss such as Pablo Escobar (Liddick, 2004). On the other hand, a devolved hierarchy permits sub-unit self-government. A devolved hierarchy permits a certain level of self-government for subsidiaries. Knowledge about these structures is vital in the creation of successful targeting. A somewhat comparable structure is hierarchical conglomerate, which is an alliance of groups with only one ruling body ranging from a centralized system to adaptable supervision. A hierarchical conglomerate uses a ruling body to regulate or supervise a varied group of organizations (Albanese, 2011). Unlike rigid hierarchies, the diversity of devolved hierarchies and hierarchical conglomerates and the fact that they have less formal, more relaxed network systems makes them very resilient to dismantling attempts and in fact harder to regulate. The difficulty was precisely described by a British custom official who remarked that trafficking groups is similar to a ‘plate of spaghetti’ (Vlassis & Williams, 2013, 73). Each component seems to connect each other, but it is not known where it all ends. Core criminal group is a loose organization comprised by horizontal structures. Most human trafficking groups may be categorized as core crime groups composed of “limited number of individuals forming a relatively tight and structured core group surrounded by a loose network of ‘associates,’ with the small size of the group helping to maintain internal discipline” (Barak, 2009, 77). Core crime groups are cunning, adaptable, and profit-driven, maneuvering across several borders and keeping collaborative relations with other organized crime groups both at home and overseas. Unfortunately, the core crime groups’ structure protects them from easy interception and capture. For example, online groups largely maneuver on an ‘independent’ framework, with members seldom physically brushing against one another, and simply transaction or meeting on the Internet. The groups are normally operated by a core group, which allocates duties, such as web design and spamming, among the members. The members manage their own external networks to perform those tasks (Glenny, 2009). The decentralized structure of core crime groups makes it hard for security forces to identify and trace them. They could have networks in numerous different nations. Moreover, numerous national jurisdictions do not have the legislative structure needed to appropriately take legal action against core crime groups. Hence, intense global cooperation and coordination is the only technique to frustrate these core crime groups (Liddick, 2004). Online organized criminal groups are a ‘nomadic’ target and it should be dealt with the international community jointly, with coordinated attempts at both global and local level. Over the recent decades, organized crime groups have further globalized. They have implemented horizontal network structures that are hard to locate and stop, obtained new technologies, and diversified their operations. Eurasian and Russian organized crime networks signify a major hazard to democratic entities and economic progress. Organized criminal network is an ever-changing coalition that does not consider itself as an organized crime group. Russian organized crime organizations and illegally connected elite may try to conspire with state-linked or state entities to weaken rivalry in strategic markets like expensive metals, aluminum, oil, and gas (Vlassis & Williams, 2013). Moreover, transnational crime networks in the area are building new connections to international drug trafficking networks. The U.S. will keep on collaborating with Russia and the countries of the region to fight illegal drugs and transnational crimes. To stress that many organized crimes are network oriented, is not to claim that it is directionless or purposeless. The most successful criminal networks have a center that runs the steering process, builds the fundamental objective of the network, assemble the main functional obligations, and establishes other major network elements (Naim, 2009). Hence, security forces and law enforcement agencies should understand these markets with regard to networks of connections that bind the customer and the supplier. (3) An apparent paradox exists concerning the relationship between the imposition of policies and security efforts and illicit crime markets. On one hand, it has been claimed that TOC proliferates in areas of weak government and the absence of regulation and active enforcement. On the other hand, it has been posited that the implementation of regulations, strengthened border security, and enforcement actually creates and sustains the existence of illicit markets. Discuss in greater detail each of these perspectives and provide examples to illustrate your points. Rectify this paradox and explain which of the perspectives holds most merit, and which is most problematic. At the national level, organized crime groups with the ability to operate across borders have thrived where the state has been incompetent, submissive, or weak. Governments that do not have strong power and legitimacy create conducive conditions for the formation of transnational crime groups. For instance, two aspects have been observed as vital to the formation of a corporate HQ and factories for illegal drugs: (1) the assault on state legitimacy by the illegal drug industry and the resulting destabilization of the state, and (2) the presence of geographical attributes that have endowed numerous regions of a specific country with a high level of self-government that the drug ‘bosses’ can easily control (Albanese, 2011). Possibly the most prominent case of how transnational crime groups can flourish in a setting of economic, social, and political disorder can be found in the states of USSR. Russian crime groups are old ones, but the breakdown of the USSR, the death of the Communist Party, and the failure of the criminal justice system obviously generated circumstances that were very favorable to the merging of current criminal groups and the formation of new criminal organizations (Liddick, 2004). However, weak government is only one of the many types of government that permit transnational crime groups to operate freely. There submissive governments too which are reluctant, instead of incapable, of implementing countermeasures, either because they are alarmed of the potential damaging impact of such measures or because they consider the core impact of transnational crime groups as valuable to society. Such form of tolerant, accommodating environment provides a perfect headquarters for transnational crime groups. In comparison to Western Europe or the U.S., the capacity of organized crime groups to dismantle the state is much more evident in Latin America because the state is seriously incapable to start with (Mandel, 2010). Moreover, national governments have been unable on the whole to sufficiently deal with organized crime groups and maintain public security. Both the courts and law enforcement agencies have been incompetent at fighting the kind of crime that is a primary worry for the general population and have often been profoundly corrupted by transnational crime entities (Mandel, 2010; Glenny, 2009). The case of Guatemala proves that the relationship between national security and organized crime is not merely one of transnational crime groups infiltrating the state, but also an instance of state preferring organized crime. For instance, the Guatemalan military had traditionally used revenues from smuggled goods to finance its official budget and underground activities and to pay for the salaries of its top officers. The military included criminal groups into its counterinsurgency missions during the civil war; during the post-war era, much of the state’s security forces established and collaborated with criminal networks, often in partnership with recognized oligarchs (Mandel, 2010; Drake & Hershberg, 2006). El Salvador has witnessed the emergence of an identical conspiracy between organized crime and state. During the presidential term of Alberto Fujimori in Peru, his intelligence director Vladimiro Montesinos exploited the government and its anti-narcotics funds to get rid of drug rivalry and push himself up as the major Peruvian trafficker (Drake & Hershberg, 2006, 88). Moreover, flourishing organized crime also endangers the state in the economic realm. Major crime-oriented aggression—the outcome of both state attempts to inhibit crime and of territorial competitions among criminal groups—hampers local economic growth, discourages foreign investment, and damages human capital. Major illegal economies, like extensive farming and processing of illicit drugs, also have numerous wicked macroeconomic consequences, by affecting inflation, destabilizing currency strength, and dislocating lawful production. However, labor-rigorous illegal economies, like the farming of illegal crops, also give economically more profitable sources of revenue to numerous people in Latin America, a large number of whom are not qualified to legal occupations and dwell in serious poverty (Mandel, 2010). Ultimately, organized crime groups threaten national security, by reinforcing the political and physical status of anti-state hostile entities. Hostile organizations, like Colombia’s ELN (National Liberation Army) and FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), have obtained substantial financial support from organized crime groups involved in drug trade, kidnapping, and extortion (Liddick, 2004). Due to this massive financial support, hostile organizations have been capable of expanding, recruiting more members, and boosting their arms acquisition. Yet, when these organizations safeguard labor-rigorous illegal economies, like drug production, they also acquire political resources from the people, since they fend for the basic necessities of the population. These political resources, largely shown in the reluctance of the people to give information about the whereabouts of the belligerents to state agencies, is especially noticeable, if the state tries to inhibit the illegal economy without offering lawful economic opportunities to the people (Vlassis & Williams, 2013). The proliferation of TOC groups is a very complicated trend. On the surface, and commonsensically, strong state regulations will thwart organized crimes. However, in reality, this is not as simple as it is. Organized crime groups, unfortunately, are beneficial to both the state and some populations. As shown in the case of Russia and Guatemala, the issue is not weak state, but the apparent value of organized crime groups to the state and society. The Guatemalan government and military use contraband resources to finance their institutions and operations. Organized crime groups also provide for the needs of the poor sectors of the society, which shift the loyalty of these beneficiaries from the state to these TOC organizations. These populations who benefit from organized crimes are unwilling to participate in state efforts to end such crimes; hence, rigid state policies against organized crimes only strengthen the resolve of these populations to support and defend their benefactors—the organized criminal groups. For me, this idea holds greater merit than the plain and simple assumption that weak states encourage TOCs. (4) (Question # 5) Present a model for what might be done nationally and internationally to prevent the proliferation of transnational crime markets and the harms that they produce? Construct a diagram or a table which succinctly presents your model of prevention. Be sure to also explain your diagram/table in written text. Even though transnational organized crimes are extremely difficult to address or very problematic for both national and international security, there are potentially effective solutions that, if appropriately implemented in practice, can be very generate highly encouraging and successful outcomes. This section provides several recommendations for national and global interventions against transnational crimes. The below diagram shows three potentially effective measures to curb organized crimes at the national level: These three general deterrent measures can be used in the national security arena against the proliferation of organized crimes. Opportunity reduction refers to efforts to reduce opportunities for TOC groups to operate or carry out their activities. Political attempts at reducing the demand of illicit goods unavoidably weakens the capabilities of criminal networks and disrupts the expansion of their operations. Breakdown of market monopolization, which organized crime groups usually govern, can greatly strengthen the attainment of this objective. Inopportunely, both components of this measure are seldom achieved in practice, since this issue is extremely thorny (Madsen, 2009). Nevertheless, actual strides toward this path are very real. Particularly, tightening of the opportunities for national and transnational organized crimes can be attained by creating such a condition, where goods dominated by criminals emerge progressive on the licit market. It is greatly related to reducing the susceptibility of the legal economy through resource reallocation, and strengthening of employment in areas with unfavorable social and economic circumstances (Shanty & Mishra, 2008). The steps toward this path are filled with particular costs and adverse effects in different parts of the globe. However, their overall impact will be favorable anyhow, provided that they are thoroughly formulated, planned, and implemented. Rigid regulation and authorization of some economic activities, particularly financial institutions like banking, which are very appealing for TOC groups, are somewhat promising. All these should be connected to rigid regulation by banks of businesses so as to hinder money laundering. New legislations aimed at sustaining urbane norms of economic activity and avoiding infiltration by organized criminal groups can have a strong preventative impact. Experts correctly claim that current general deterrent strategies are progressively implemented so as to regulate TOCs (Mandel, 2010). However, they seem particularly effective alongside particular strategies. On the other hand, potential global measures to curb the operations of TOC organizations are shown in the diagram below: At the harshest end of the range of intervention measures accessible to the international community is the exercise of military force to immediately and effectively overthrow totalitarian government and try to establish a doable, sustainable democratic government instead or, more generally, effort to create core circumstances of public security and legitimacy as a component of a rebuilding program. In cases where elected regimes have been coercively deposed by military upheaval and have asked the involvement of outside agencies to reestablish situations of democracy and public order, just like in Sierra Leone and Haiti, almost the whole global community has approved of the exercise of coercive authority as a legal way of reestablishing the overthrown democratic government (Vlassis & Williams, 2013). Even though quite costly, and usually debatable, and of varied effectiveness, assuming power of a nation’s political mechanisms and agencies has traditionally been one strategy through which international entities can enable democratization, and therefore effectively deal with TOC organizations. As a strategy of power, control have be ‘mild’ or ‘severe’—the former requiring attempts to hamper local reliance to organized crimes or illicit economies through the stead allocation of power roles to indigenous or local officials (Liddick, 2004). Nevertheless, without using coercive means, powerful international entities can maneuver perils of corrective measures and possibilities of favorable incentives to transform the advantages and disadvantages that local policymakers confront in implementing state policies against TOC groups. Externally developed punishments and rewards function either instantly, by changing the core controls of ruling criminal groups. External inducements can be categorized into two general groups: corrective or favorable. Corrective measures, or punishments, are coercive economic, diplomatic, and political instruments employed to encourage policy reform in a given nation (Liddick, 2004). Favorable circumstances can also be used in order to encourage democratic policies against TOC organizations. Essentially, this medium of power requires connecting the perceived important commodities to the accomplishment of recognized democratic changes (Mandel, 2010). In general, studies in the recent decades have reported a significant correlation between various favorable incentives and reforms of policy against TOC groups in certain nations. Governments that are unable to act in response to incentives to exercise recognized reforms are neither forced nor compensated, but endure the disadvantages of exclusion from security guarantees, advantageous trade and investment circumstances, and aid distribution (Liddick, 2004). Not like coercive measures that depend on a strategy of control, the processes of influence emphasizing corrective and favorable external inducements presume that domestic entities sustain a level of independent decision and that those entities act in response to a logic of predicted outcomes and previous inclinations. References Albanese, J.S. (2011). Transnational Crime and the 21st Century: Criminal Enterprise, Corruption and Opportunity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Banerjee, I. (2007). The Internet and Governance in Asia: A Critical Reader. Singapore: AMIC. Drake, P. & Hershberg, E. (2006). State and Society in Conflict: Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Glenny, M. (2009). McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Liddick, D. (2004). The Global Underworld: Transnational Crime and the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Madsen, F. (2009). 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