Smaller Networks: Key to Global Success - Research Paper Example

The major factors that influenced these activities were growth of low-cost mass transit facilities and growth of international telecommunication. Transport facilitated the mass movement of goods and smuggling of people across the globe with the lowering of freight and increased the number of routes available (Aguilar, 2003). Zhang and Chin (2003) assert that this activities are not traditionally organized crime groups but are committed by loose networks of entrepreneurs exposed to the opportunity to participate in crimes by family and ethnic ties for personal gain only (Zhan and Chin 2003).

These organized crimes do range from drugs trafficking, modern slave trade, cybercrime and counterfeiting, gangs and heroin amongst other. The following is the discussion of forms of organized crimes the roles of individual member, network of contacts between themselves, and degree of specialization, communication and geographical concentration. How much the legal institution has played their role to ensure these activities are minimized? Drug trafficking Desroches (2007) states that activities of drug trafficking involve the importation, manufacturing, cultivation, distribution, and sale of illicit drugs.

For example Narcotics are moved from smugglers, growers or manufacturers to wholesalers to distributers, who then pass the product to the drug users (Desroches, 2007). According to Desroches, (2007) growers produce marijuana crops often through sophisticated hydroponic operations while manufactures produces in laboratories. Aguilar et al (2008) argue that the border between United States and Mexico the second largest trading partner and a party to the North American Free Trade Agreement contribute a lot to the smuggling of contraband goods and illegal migrants the criminal organization began with the Medellin and Cali cartels of Colombia.

The drugs were later shipped to United States through Caribbean islands by Miami Vice (Aguilar, 2008). Today there are five Mexican cartels namely Gulf, Sinaloa, Juarez, Tijuana and Valencia. Furthermore, these small networks enjoy certain important security advantages because of fewer numbers of people involved in smuggling or knowledgeable about its activities, makes it keeps its operation covered from all relevant law enforcement agencies (Zhan and Chin, 2003). Despite the trafficking, there has been major difficulty with the prosecutions of the network in that no previous study of drug trafficking organization has been identified, a good example by Natarajan and Belanger`s (1998) study of 39 large drug trafficking network prosecuted in the Federal courts in New York City between 1984 and 1997 revealed none that was engaged in all levels of trafficking.

The Modern Slave Trade Another organized crime is the human trafficking which involves the involuntary movement of people across and within borders and involves deception, violence and coercion. Human trafficking numbers are hard to create, the United Nations estimates that number to at least four million people each year and generates estimated annual revenue of $7 billion to $10 billion, Mexico lies between $6 billion and $9 billion (Aguilar, S. et al 2008). Aguilar, (2008) confirms that many trafficking victims fall into some form of human slavery that is serving as sex, farm, factory, or domestic slaves and in many instances young children are more vulnerable.

According to International Labor Organization estimates 27