Letizia Paoli - Böcker

While the success of national and international law enforcement cooperation to suppress organized crime means that stable, large-scale criminal organizations like the Cosa Nostra or the Japanese Yakuza have seen their power reduced, organized crime remains a concern for many governments. Economic globalization and the easing of restrictions on exchanges across borders now provide ample opportunity for money-making activities in illegal markets. Policies designed to stop illegal market flows often shift these activities to new places or create new problems, as the U.S.- led war on drugs spread production and trafficking to a number South and Central American countries. The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime provides informed, authoritative, and comprehensive overviews of these issues and other principal forms of organized crime, as well as the type and effectiveness of efforts to prevent and control them. Leading scholars from criminology, law, sociology, history, and political science discuss the key concepts, history, and methods of organized crime; the major actors and interactions involved in it; the markets and activities frequently associated with organized crime; and the policies designed to combat it. Individual chapters on criminal organizations and specific activities or markets comprise the heart of the volume. The chapters on actors provide the history, analyze the structure and activities, and assess the strength and future prospects of each organization. Articles on particular markets address the patterns of activity, identify the most affected regions, and where possible provide estimated revenues, discuss factors promoting the activity, and disclose information on the victims and harms caused. The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime delivers a systematic, high-quality, and truly global approach to the topic and with it a more complete understanding of organized crime in its many forms for researchers, government officials, and policymakers.

During 2000-1 in Afghanistan, the Taliban achieved a longtime goal of national and international drug policy agencies: a large, sudden, and unanticipated reduction in world opium production. This cutback provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the dynamics of the world opiate market and ask whether further interventions could effectively reduce the flows of drugs. Based on an extended, multi-national study, the authors construct a new model for the trafficking of drugs and revenues and offer the first account of the world market in heroin and other illicit opiates during and after the 2001 ban. The authors' broader findings demonstrate how robust production, trafficking, and consumption combine to make successful long-term interventions on the supply-side rare exceedingly difficult, though specific policies can impact the organization and behavior of markets. For reductions in both production and consumption, where the cultivation of opium is entrenched in the normal life and legitimate economy of millions of people, international agencies and foreign governments must provide adequate and long-term support to foster both alternative development policies and law enforcement programs.

Relying on previously undisclosed confessions of former mafia members now cooperating with the police, Letizia Paoli provides a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure in Italy. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.

Assessing the Harms of Crime provides a firm analytical foundation for making normative decisions about criminal and related policy, taking harm—and its reduction—as a conceptual starting point and supplying the means for systematic, empirical analysis in a harm assessment framework.By exploring harm's place in legal history, theory, criminology, and related fields and by considering the relevance of harm and its reduction for both criminal policy and the governance of security, the book demonstrates the centrality of harm, including its reduction, to crime, policy, and governance. It also highlights a substantial gap in methods available to the policy community to take on harm and the challenges of developing them.Working to fill that gap, the book presents the authors' "Harm Assessment Framework," consisting of tools and a process to identify, evaluate, and rank harms and to carefully distinguish between harms that result directly from activities and those that are remote or driven at least partially by policy.The book also presents applications to complex crimes, primarily involving coca and cocaine, that show the framework's value with new, actionable insight to harm and policy. On this basis, the book argues that criminology would benefit from expanding its mission to include harm and target harm reduction and from positioning harm assessment as a core task. Lastly, it posits that systematic, empirical harm-based policy analysis can contribute positively to decisions about criminal policy and the governance of security and to advancing justice.

The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime provides an informed, authoritative, and comprehensive overview of current knowledge about the nature and effects of the principal forms of organized crime, as well as the type and effectiveness of efforts to prevent and control them. Reflecting the transnational dimensions of criminal organizations and their activities, and the growing role of international organizations reacting to organized crime, The Handbook takes a global perspective with first-rate contributions from around the world covering the main regions and countries in which organized crime activity is at its greatest. It is divided into four sections: concepts and research methods, actors and interactions, markets and activities, and, finally, national and international policies to fight criminal organizations. While there are a number of organized crime texts available, none delivers a systematic, high-quality and truly global approach to the topic as is available in The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime. Its insights illuminate both traditional areas of study in the field and pathways for developing cutting-edge research questions.

This book offers a novel perspective for conceptualizing legality in market exchanges. It challenges the conventional binary of ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ markets by introducing the concept of variably legal markets—arenas of exchange where legality is conditional, multidimensional, and context-dependent.Drawing on criminology, law, economics, and regulatory studies, the editors argue that many contemporary markets—such as those involving commercial sex, performance-enhancing drugs, and cryptocurrencies—operate in a blurry middle ground shaped by overlapping legal regimes, inconsistent enforcement, and shifting socio-political norms. To advance this perspective, this collection includes illustrative case studies from experts in this field to reveal how legal status fluctuates across jurisdictions, supply chains, and actors, and how this ambiguity complicates both scholarly analysis and policy interventions. Paoli and Lord call for a more nuanced approach that moves beyond rigid classifications and instead embraces the complexity of realworld market dynamics. This work not only bridges gaps between organized crime and white-collar crime literature but also sets a new agenda for empirical research and regulatory reform.This collection will be essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, economics, and law. It will also be useful for policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand and govern the messy realities of modern markets.

This volume represents the first attempt to systematically compare organised crime concepts, as well as historical and contemporary patterns and control policies in thirteen European countries. Experts from different disciplines provide unprejudiced insight.

This volume represents the first attempt to systematically compare organised crime concepts, as well as historical and contemporary patterns and control policies in thirteen European countries. These include seven ‘old’ EU Member States (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom), two ‘new’ members (the Czech Republic and Poland), a candidate country (Turkey), and three non-EU countries (Albania, Russia and Switzerland). Based on a standardised research protocol, thirty-three experts from different legal and social disciplines provide insight through detailed country reports. On this basis, the editors compare organised crime patterns and policies in Europe and assess EU initiatives against organised crime.Its informed analyses and unprejudiced assessments will make Organised Crime in Europe an indispensable resource for scholars, students, practitioners, and policy-makers interested in understanding the complex phenomenon of organised crime and its related control policies in Europe.

Detailing the daily operations of the trade and its gray area as a semi-legal market, the authors cover important issues ranging from athletes most at risk to the role of organized crime in sports doping, and whether sports governing bodies are enabling the trade.

Detailing the daily operations of the trade and its gray area as a semi-legal market, the authors cover important issues ranging from athletes most at risk to the role of organized crime in sports doping, and whether sports governing bodies are enabling the trade.

Information technology offers unprecedented opportunities to individuals, businesses and the public sector but also creates new vulnerabilities to crime. Impressive cybercrimes have been reported in the media in recent years, demonstrating the grave harm that even a single cyberattack can cause. Yet no systematic assessment of the impact of cybercrime on Belgian society and economy had been conducted until the start of the research project Belgian Cost of Cybercrime (BCC) in 2013, which was funded by the Belgian Service Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and coordinated by the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), in collaboration with the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC).Building on that large multidisciplinary project, the book assesses the impact of cybercrime on businesses based in Belgium, drawing from a thorough conceptualization of both cybercrime and itsimpact. Using data collected through two surveys sent to more than 9,000 representatives of Belgian businesses, the authors report that most of the responding businesses are confronted with at least one type of cybercrime every year and some of them suffer serious harm from these incidents. Lastly, the book calls for the identification and implementation of effective preventive measures targeting the different types of cybercrime.

In the post-9/11 era, the nexus between organized crime and terrorism has raised much concern and has been widely discussed in both academic and policy circles, but is still largely misunderstood. This critical book contributes innovatively to the debate by distinguishing three types of nexus—interaction, transformation/imitation and similarities—and identifying the promoting factors of each type.With its multifaceted but complementary chapters, the book provides conceptual and theoretical frameworks for readers, as well as the evidence needed to develop more realistic, effective and humane policies to tackle organized crime, terrorism and the nexuses between them. Bringing together a range of international multidisciplinary specialists, it includes three comparative analyses of worldwide transfers of personnel, weapons and money between organized crime and terrorism and 12 case studies examining local manifestations of the nexus in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Two other chapters further review the national, European and international policies adopted and implemented so far to deal with the different nexuses.This book will be a valuable resource for researchers and policymakers in the fields of comparative law, criminal law and justice and public policy, who specialize in the analysis and control of organized crime and terrorism. It will also appeal to senior law enforcement officials and practitioners due to the counterintuitive policy implications drawn from the comparative analysis of the findings.