There is a consensus that organized crime (OC) is harmful and its profits are immense. Yet the concept of OC itself lumps together people engaging in very different activities—from peasants in Colombia to international drug traffickers to mafiosi in Italy—, and scholars in the field rely on limited empirical evidence, generally of poor quality. Our overall objectives are to establish this field of study on solid analytical grounds and to produce high-quality data. We develop a framework that distinguishes three key activities of OC groups: Production, Trade, and Governance. We theorize that while some OC groups specialize in either the production or transport and exchange of illicit goods, others seek to establish authority over a territory and/or a market, governing interactions and exchanges within these domains. We ask: How do groups engaging in (criminal) Production, Trade or Governance differ from each other? Do they each have a different organizational structure and members with different ‘professional’ profiles and skills? To what extent is there an overlap between them? Finally, under which conditions would one group specializing in Production or Trade evolve into a Governance-type OC group?
The project covers a broad range of organized crime in depth: cybercrime, the international trade of drugs from Colombia to Europe, and the emergence of criminal governance inside and outside prisons in countries as diverse as the UK, Georgia, Russia, and Japan. The project is producing high quality data sets that are hard to collect and time-consuming to code. Such data sets include the World Cybercrime Index, the Russian mafia database, and additional, curated databases on internal drug trafficking and the use of violence, crime in the city of Nottingham, gangs in London, and the effects of the Japanese yakuza on the local economy. CRIMGOV breaks traditional disciplinary boundaries between the social sciences and adopts a global outlook, producing substantial new findings and data, speaking to scholars across different disciplines.
CRIMGOV is important to society because it offers the analytical tools to distinguish key functions within organized crime: peasants tolling the fields in Colombia are very different from international drug traffickers, who in turn are very different from local mafia families. The first engages in production, the second in trade, and the third aspires to govern territories. By distinguishing these key functions, policies for fighting organized crime can be tailored to the activities undertaken by each type of offender/crime group. This perspective also allows us to identify those who are victims as opposed to perpetrators.
