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“For on one side lay Scylla and on the other divine Charybdis terribly sucked down the salt water of the sea”, we read in the Odyssey. We can only wonder what Homer and his character would have thought if he found a massive bridge between Scylla and Charybdis had been…

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA, 2000) outlines an array of covert tactical options available to UK law enforcement agencies; options that provide investigators with the authority to seek out and gather intelligence and evidence. The Act provides a statutory apparatus through which the somewhat grey notion of covert…

As Germany joins Canada and a handful of American states in legalising the sale, possession and consumption of recreational cannabis, countering organised crime must be at the heart of legislation. After years of intense debate in Germany’s Bundestag, proponents of cannabis legalisation law won out over the bill’s sceptics and…

This blog joint second place winner of the 2023 winner of the Bill Tupman Prize, submitted in partnership with the ECPR-SGOG Summer School. Essential to millions of Italians, healthcare has not gone untouched by the Mafia’s ever-diversifying business models and influential reach. Rather, inadequate controls may leave an opening for…

National authorities suspect that “Primeiro Comando da Capital” (PCC), a powerful Brazilian criminal organization, is behind the theft of several aircrafts in the northern province of Chaco in Argentina. The trend has raised alarms over the PCC’s continued regional and international growth. PCC Presence on the Border with Paraguay Triggers…

In Southeast Asia, a growing number of scam centres have been identified, where recruits groom victims online to encourage investment in fraudulent schemes. But these recruits are victims themselves; tricked with job offers in another country, they are forced into criminality. Described using the Chinese term Shāzhūpán, or ‘pig-butchering scams’,…

The Škaljarski and Kavački clans are two Montenegrin criminal groups originating from the coastal city of Kotor. Formerly united as a single criminal group, in 2014, the Škaljarski and Kavački clans engaged in a violent clash following the disappearance of 200kg of cocaine from South America, which was hidden in…

Any future public security strategy to counter the PCC’s emerging influence in and out of Brazil must reinterpret the role of mass-incarceration in order to interrupt the self-sustaining structure of PCC recruitment and expansion. This is not to claim that imprisonment shouldn’t represent a key punitive and strategic asset against…

Closed case reviews indicate that gender norms might be as harmful as they are helpful in understanding female involvement in wildlife crime, with better evidence needed to inform enforcement strategies. The role of women in relation to wildlife crime is viewed through a lens of localised gender norms, social conventions…

The inherent criminality of authoritarianism may be consolidating the business model of global counterfeiting.  On a sunny day in the capital of the newly bankrupt Sri Lanka, university students were on the march against the regime thought to be behind rampant corruption. Some students’ t-shirts read bold signs, others sporting…