Transnational Organized Crime Summary of a Workshop (1999) / Chapter Skim
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2 Definitions and Descriptions
2 Definitions and Descriptions
Pages 7-21
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From page 7... ...
COMPLEXITIES OF DEFINITION The term "transnational crime" was developed by the Unitecl Nations (UN) Crime ancl Criminal Justice Branch in 1974 to guide discussion at one of the quinquennial UN crime conferences.
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The transnational element of some of these categories seems somewhat strained; for example, it includes all computer crimes because computers are now linked across national boundaries, although a specific computer crime may involve no party or transaction outside the United States. One possible conceptual definition was offered at the workshop: "acts that are offenses in one state that involve actions or actors in another state, requiring more than a single opportunistic transaction between individuals." The first part of the definition elides the question of whether both jurisdictions criminalize the same activities, and the second makes the distinction between transnational organized crime and the broader phenomenon of transnational crime.
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. 1 ills IS not to claim that transnational organized crime generates nei ther violence nor corruption.
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This may be particularly useful for understanding the emergence ancl functioning of transnational organized crime. The network is likely to have a core group of people who are fairly tightly connected ancl then a more dispersed set of participants, most of whom will collaborate only in response to initiative by the core group ancl who have more specialized functions.
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From page 11... ...
Given that most of these offenses remain unsolved, it is highly unlikely that an estimate of the transnational organized crime component of insurance fraud can be generated. Transnational organized crime is also close to transnational white-collar crime.
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A variety of abstract definitions can reasonably compete here, but a listing of activities should also be useful for defining the current field of research. DESCRIBING TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME The United Nation's categories of transnational crime include traditional international crimes such as hijacking and terrorism; various types of frauds; trafficking in stolen goods or illicit commodities, such as weapons and human beings; and environmental crime.
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markings and license plates, taken to ports, crated and sealed in intentionally mislabeled containers, and shipped overseas (National Insurance Crime Bureau, 19991. In one case, a large, loosely organized, but very proficient group in Florida was found to have been smuggling stolen vehicles with expertly counterfeited VINs to countries in South America.
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Most smugglers or criminal organizations relinquish control of an illicit item once it is delivered, but traffickers frequently maintain control of illegal immigrants, forcing them to work for low wages and to commit crimes to support themselves (Shelley, 19981. Conditions oftransit often endanger the lives of the people being trafficked.
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has recently found that health care fraud remains at alarmingly high levels, despite attention from law enforcement, and that major scams are artfully designed to circumvent routine controls and remain invisible for long periods. Russian emigre crime groups have been particularly active in insurance fraud schemes victimizing Medicare and
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From page 16... ...
Investigations have also identified similar schemes in which Russian crime groups in the United States staged car accidents and then established phony medical clinics for the purpose of submitting fraudulent claims for unnecessary treatments. Nexus Between Legal and Illegal Activities By their very nature, many transnational criminal activities, especially financial crimes, require the tacit or open cooperation of legitimate organizations and actors.
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Passas notes that the liquidators could not account for several billion dollars, and subsequent investigations into BCCI's practices, as well as press reports, fueled a massive international scandal. The bank, ostensibly established to serve the poor and poor countries, was accused instead of serving Colombian drug barons, a number of intelligence agencies, several prominent Third World dictators, money launderers, arms traders, and tax evaders, among others (Passes, 19961.
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Transnational crime produces benefits for some people, giving corporations and governments an incentive to develop relationships with organized criminal groups, or at least tolerate their activities. Historically, the smuggling of American cigarettes into highly protected markets resulted in the crumbling of resistance to foreign smoking products in those markets and in increased profits for American tobacco companies.
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Ethnicity and Transnational Crime Ethnic minorities, particularly those newly arrived in a country, turn out to have an especially important role in transnational organized crime, in both the United States and other rich countries. Bovenkirk (1998)
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Theories to explain the connection between minority or immigrant status and criminal activity are not hard to find (Tonry, 19971. Such groups have a comparative advantage in smuggling and domestic distribution of goods and services from their home country; better connections with the producers and corrupt authorities there; and a protective immigrant community that is not yet trusting of local authorities, thus providing barriers to the recruitment of effective informants or the conduct of investigations generally.
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lust as operational agencies allocate their investigative resources to what they see as the most important cases, researchers may want to reserve the designation of transnational organized crime to mean certain offenses carried out by certain kinds of organizations i.e., above some threshold of size, durability, capacity, or harm. Developing a variety of definitions that include some or all of these elements and are based in law enforcement and other justice system responses may be one path to sorting through these problems of nomenclature.
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