Globalization of Crime: How Organized Crime Goes Global
This paper examines the globalization of organized crime as a multifaceted phenomenon shaped by economic demand, decentralized criminal networks, and evolving criminal strategies. Drawing on reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and academic sources, the paper traces how organized crime transitioned from rigid hierarchies to fluid, globally connected networks. It explores the drug trade as a case study — particularly the shift from Colombian to Mexican cartels — and discusses emerging crime types such as cybercrime, human trafficking, and wildlife poaching. The paper concludes that as long as consumer demand for illicit goods persists, global criminal enterprises will continue to adapt and survive.
- Introduction: Organized Crime in a Globalized World: Defines organized crime and its globalization drivers
- Background of Organized Crime: Why targeting criminal groups fails to stop illicit markets
- The Drug Trade and Global Criminal Networks: Drug trade as a lens for understanding global crime
- Criminal Adaptability and the Shift to Mexican Cartels: How Colombian cartels gave way to Mexican cartel dominance
- Consumer Demand as the Root of Global Crime: Mexican cartels, lawlessness, and policy limitations
- Conclusion: Demand-side causes and strategies for combating global crime
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its analysis in a concrete case study — the shift from Colombian to Mexican drug cartels — which makes the abstract concept of criminal globalization tangible and traceable.
- It draws on authoritative sources, including the UNODC's 2010 transnational crime report and The Economist, lending credibility to its claims about emerging crime types.
- The argument moves logically from structural description (how organized crime works) to causal analysis (why it persists), culminating in a demand-side explanation that gives the paper a clear thesis.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses the drug trade as a synecdoche for global organized crime — treating one well-documented criminal sector as a lens through which broader patterns of adaptation, market dynamics, and law enforcement limitations can be analyzed. This technique allows the writer to make general claims while anchoring them in specific, cited evidence.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a conceptual framing of organized crime and globalization, then provides background on why criminal markets are difficult to disrupt. It narrows to the drug trade as a detailed example, traces the evolution of specific cartels, and broadens again to address consumer demand as the structural root of global crime. This funnel-and-widen structure is well-suited to policy-oriented analysis.
Introduction: Organized Crime in a Globalized World
One aspect of organized crime that makes it so ripe for globalization — aside from the fact that it is methodical, fortified, and strategic — is that it is distinctive from professional or street crime in the sense that it seeks to control something: be it a distinct territory, a city's ports, or other arenas. In the last twenty years or so, the nature of crime has also changed dramatically. It used to operate through a hierarchy with a clear division of labor and specialization of functions. Eventually, these vertical and horizontal hierarchies dissolved into a larger number of sparsely connected networks (Aguilar-Milan, 2008). This shift signaled the globalization of crime: an event in one place could affect another arena entirely (Aguilar-Milan, 2008).
In order to best comprehend the globalization of crime, it helps to consider it as a business activity. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the spread of capitalism, and the expansion of transportation networks around the world all enabled legitimate trade to boom — and this has meant illicit trade as well.
Background of Organized Crime
"Most organized crime problems today seem to be less a matter of a group of individuals who are involved in a range of illicit activities, and more a matter of a group of illicit activities in which some individuals and groups are presently involved: strategies aimed at the groups will not stop the illicit activities if the dynamics of the market remain unaddressed" (unodc.org, 2010). This is a truly formidable challenge, as it is very difficult to find data and trends on clandestine markets — though doing so is necessary in order to better combat them.
For instance, experts have found that while one can target the groups responsible for organized crime, such a maneuver is unlikely to interrupt the flow of illegal substances or human trafficking. Rather, as long as there is a demand for illegal substances, products, or trafficked people, government forces alone will not be sufficient to combat this problem (unodc.org, 2010).
The Drug Trade and Global Criminal Networks
Examining one particular branch of organized crime can help illuminate the broader complexity of the problem. Drug dealing has moved overseas to nations such as Mexico, Colombia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria — where drug cartels still engage in violence to maintain their monopoly (DK, 2013). However, the decline of the drug trade in some regions has largely meant an increase in other types of crimes, which the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime treats as emerging crimes:
"These include poaching, illegal logging, and trafficking controlled goods such as archaeological artifacts and endangered animals. Those sorts of crimes required ever more dispersed networks, with specialized skills replacing sheer muscle. But even they require more violence than the newest of crimes: cybercrime, identity theft, and fraud. These are increasingly being committed by new organizations from countries with little history of organized crime, and are probably the fastest-growing ways of making an illicit profit. By contrast, the trade of the old-fashioned gangster — well-known in his district, his monopoly enforced by violence — now looks antiquated. They have been replaced by a type of globetrotting businessman-gangster" (DK, 2013).
In short, when it comes to organized crime, the era of the neighborhood gangster is largely over.
Conclusion
The globalization of crime is not a passing trend but a structural reality shaped by global markets, technological change, and persistent human demand for illicit goods and services. Organized crime has evolved from rigid hierarchies into flexible, transnational networks capable of adapting to law enforcement pressure. The shift from Colombian to Mexican cartels illustrates this adaptability clearly: suppressing one node of a criminal network often merely relocates the problem rather than eliminating it. Addressing the globalization of crime therefore requires not only strategic law enforcement and international cooperation, but also a longer-term focus on reducing the consumer demand that makes these criminal markets viable in the first place.
References
Aguilar-Milan, S., Foltz, J., & Jackson, J. (2008). The globalization of crime. Retrieved from alsekresearch.com: http://www.alsekresearch.com/images/globalization_of_crime.pdf
DK. (2013, August 15). How has organised crime adapted to globalisation? Retrieved from economist.com: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/08/economist-explains-9
unodc.org. (2010). The globalization of crime. Retrieved from unodc.org: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/TOCTA_Report_2010_low_res.pdf
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