Transnational Crime
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Question 1
Transnational crime is a growing concern for national and international security. It is a growing threat to public health, democratic institutions and public safety. One of the factors that have significantly increased transnational crime is the penetrability of the state institutions. Due to corruption and bad governance, developing countries have a higher risk of transnational crimes. Moreover, criminal groups have penetrated institutions such as intelligence service. Politicians and big businesses are involved in significantly affecting the economy. Weak governance in developing countries has seen officials ignore transnational criminal activities. By infiltrating the political space, TOC use bribes and supporting their members running for office. Subsequently, this leads to infiltration of financial as well as security institutions through coercion or bribery. Governance in developed countries is not without flaws either. Frustrations caused by disagreements in how government officials carry out their mandate makes it easier for criminals to improve and sharpen their tactics.
The relationship between transnational crime and Crime-Terror-Insurgency: Terrorists and militant groups steadily shift to TOC to collect funds and obtain logistical support for their terrorist actions. The United States’ international drug networks (DTO) are associated with terrorist groups. For these groups’ ability to fund terrorist activities, the role of the Taliban and the Colombian Revolutionary Army (FARC) in drug trafficking is essential. Some of the terror groups are not motivated by financial gain but by radical ideals. An example is one of four men who were arrested in 2009 at Ney York city. The four were planning to bomb Jewish synagogues, motivated by what they believed was Osama bin Laden’s wishes. It is based on these that differences in the two are concluded. Terrorism, unlike transnational crime, is based on hatred either religious or otherwise and not for profit.
Drug trafficking has increased: Despite success in the recent years in fighting cocaine, illegal drugs remain a serious threat to people’s health, safety and financial goodwill, particularly as regards the trafficking of cocaine. The demand for illegal drugs fuels the influence, exploitation and misuse of criminal organizations in the U.S. and abroad worldwide. Research conducted by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes through a detailed questionnaire proved that some drug groups across the globe are well organized. However, most are not officially documented. Moreover, only a small number are ethnically based with most having no social or ethnic identity. A large number of these groups have activities running in up three different countries proving the spread of the vice. The Afghanistan Drug Trafficking Organizations worked with other countries in Western Africa to smuggle drugs through Europe and the U.S. Many organized criminal gangs, including some in Russia, China, Italy and the Balkans, are forming partnerships with drug cartels to build their distribution networks and markets.
Smuggling people: Human smuggling is the facilitation, transportation, attempt to transport or unlawfully enter, in violation of one or more of the laws of the country, whether by illegal or covert use of fake papers or by the evasion of adequate border controls, an individual or persons crossing international borders. Many transnational crimes, including drug trafficking and official corruption in government, refer to alien smuggling networks. Criminals, refugees, terrorists, slavery and business migrants alike will displace the victims. They threaten nations’ authority and also endanger the lives of smugglers. The smuggling of human beings for sex and organs is very rife. It generates billions of dollars a year, making it quite profitable and lucrative for transnational criminals.
Question 2
Globalization is a process of cooperation and unification between individuals, businesses and governments of various nations, a process guided by foreign trade and investment and supported by Information technology. It is having an effect in communities around the world on the environment, culture, political institutions, economic growth, security and human physical well-being. Transnational offenders were among the most outstanding winners of globalization. Globalization promotes foreign trade but also raises the challenge of controlling global trade; traffickers and smugglers have exploited this. Globalization has intensified inequality across the world, and that its destructive impact has directly led to people joining organized crime and working as coping mechanisms in illegal markets.
Since the 1970s, the global financial system has experienced extensive deregulation. That has made it easier for illegal actors to launder the criminal proceeds. Moreover, terrorists, rebels and warlords all rely upon illegal activities as a mechanism of funding. Often they encounter criminal groups while engaged in illegal activity, but the direct group-to-group connection is not that relevant for most. It is merely a business operation or a supplier link.
Facilitation of foreign trade by globalization unwittingly leads to difficulties in controlling global trade despite its economic advantages. Smugglers and traffickers in their search for profit that enhances the perpetrating crimes exploit this challenge. The gradual reform of the global financial system since the 1970s is also a significant contributor. It has created loopholes that have made it possible for criminal actors to laundry proceeds of crime with attempts to create laws and protections because they are not very successful. The unregulated illegal activities provide channels for terrorists, rebels and warlords to finance criminals who follow a variety of distinct structures depending on their circumstances.
The advent of technology becomes a double-edged sword that provides valuable security for end-users but is also used worldwide for illegal activity, organization, preparation and execution of their operations. Mobile telephone and internet technologies have allowed better communication and business behaviour across digital avenues. Criminal gangs use these to carry out their illegal activities, which is soliciting drug and child pornography customers and organizing these operations. In the case of child pornography, consumers pay for accessing pornographic images and videos from underage kids online. Legislation used to track and curtail any of these online activities does not apply if servers in other countries prohibit those illicit activities from being effectively prosecuted and eradicated.
Transnational criminal groups also exploit the movement of citizens through countries. The apparent activities that this makes are trafficking in human beings and smuggling. Still, a more crucial illegal activity relies on the legitimate movement of people to create a social network, a crucial feature of the criminal organization. A transnational criminal network can be described as a set of trans-boundary nodes linked together by Connection relations and sharing of the tools. Social networks serve as middlemen for resource mobilization that resembles the operations of vast divisions of multinational corporations.
While there are several shared forums for the exchange of knowledge and intelligence, which aims to curb transnational crime, very little is being done to promote the sharing of this information. With diplomatic missions internationally present, very few law enforcement agencies pursue and engage in the same aim. Countries like Lichtenstein and Switzerland have strict confidentiality and financial security, which protect against disclosure of their clients ‘ money to law enforcement agencies and bodies. This confidentiality and security benefits organized crime and is therefore used by criminals to prevent authorities’ arrest and freezing of assets.
Question 4
Many criminal groups around the world have been disbanded in the United States and other countries. The experience of the United States with La Cosa Nostra and the experiences of Colombia with the Medellin and Cali Cartels and even the FARC show that the criminal and guerrilla groups once deemed untouchable can be controlled, reduced, disrupted and dismantled. Protect Americans and our partners from damage, aggression and the use of transnational networks of criminals. The goals of U.S. people and partnerships are protection, security and prosperity. Subsequently, to target networks, which pose the most severe threat to the security and protection of citizens, including those traffickers in illegal drugs, weapons and particularly women and children. Partner countries need to help improve governance and accountability, crack the corruptive influence of cross-border criminal networks, and build severe alliances for organized crime.
The U.S. needs ready, trustworthy and competent partners to battle TOC’s corrupt insecure and associated government threats. Another paradigm for combating crime is the collapse of the economic power transnational criminal networks and the protection of strategic markets and the U.S. financial system against TOCs. This model identifies the attacks by transnational criminals on their financial basis; deprives them of their illicit wealth; discloses the connection of these criminals to the financial system; reveals their criminal activities behind legitime fronts, and protects critical markets and the U.S. financial system. More reliable data on transnational crime are required in the United States and its allies to properly allocate resources to maximize effects and reduce expenditure for wasteful programs. The United States needs to partner with neighbouring governments to establish a UNODC trust fund that will enhance the gathering of information on several cross-border criminal issues. UNODC compiles global statistics on drugs, trafficking in human beings and corruption today. Still, accurate figures are difficult to obtain given the limited resources available in countries, data manipulation and low turnout from local institutions. The proposed fiduciary fund could be used to create local staff technical expertise to collect and analyze data and to establish a continuous training system (as stated in a U.N. Commission on Drugs report). The “crime observatories” program run by the International Center for Crime Prevention is a model for this kind of successful data analysis. America’s history in battling global terrorist networks since 9/11 attacks will provide valuable lessons about how transnational organized crime organizations are to be weakened. The U.S. should work with international partners to introduce and adapt to the danger of transnational crime effective anti-terrorist programs, including frameworks for the identification of mutual threats and foreign and public-private relation. For example, by imposing sanctions on criminal networks that mimic sanctions on Al-Qaeda, the U.S. government has already taken several measures to apply counter-terror tactics to counter scale acts.
Programs like the U.N. commission on Drugs should promote more comprehensive international cooperation to strengthen their effect. It is estimated that $2-3 trillion is washed per year between the IMF and the World Bank. However, only 170 million dollars worldwide have been identified and stopped last year. The U.S. government should work more closely with the financial sector in many ways to deal with money laundering and political corruption. A more comprehensive study of public officials’ banking activities, as well as new collaborations with international governments, will take positive measures to establish efficient regulation of informal financial networks and money transfer systems.
Power development programs, currently spread through several national and foreign organizations, are expected by the United States to streamline. The U.S. foreign Department of Drugs and Anti-Terrorism, Department of Defense and Drug Enforcement Administration in the U.S. are working together. In addition to a variety of foreign projects, all operations to strengthen the capacity of developing countries to tackle transnational crime are carried out by the Foreign Development Agency, the National Justice Institute and the Defense Department. The services run by these agencies are also uncoordinated. Based on a 2011 Plan for fighting transnational organized crime, the U.S. government should create a database that charts the attempts it has made in all regions and issues to tackle transnational crime and use the findings to increase cooperation and minimize effort duplication.