Why global crime has emerged
Globalisation creates both new opportunities for old crimes and entirely new types of crime that cross borders.
As societies become more interconnected, so does crime. The same forces that drive globalisation β open borders, faster transport, deregulated markets, global finance and new technology β also create new opportunities for crime and new types of crime that operate across national boundaries.
Castells argued that there is now a global criminal economy worth hundreds of billions of dollars, networked across the world just like the legitimate economy. Crime, like business, has gone global.
Reasons globalisation enables crime:
- Open borders and easier movement of people and goods make trafficking and smuggling easier.
- The deregulated global economy and global finance let criminals move and launder money across borders and let corporations evade tax and regulation.
- New technology and the internet create cybercrime and let criminal networks coordinate worldwide and reach victims anywhere.
- Global inequality pushes vulnerable people into migration (where they can be trafficked) and into supplying global criminal markets.
Glenny (in McMafia) describes how organised crime now operates like a transnational business, exploiting open markets and weak regulation. Hobbs and Dunningham describe crime as 'glocal' β organised crime is globally connected but locally rooted, run by local networks plugged into global supply chains rather than by a single worldwide mafia.
Beck's 'global risk society' is useful here too: globalisation produces new, manufactured, borderless risks β including environmental harm β that no single nation can control alone.
- Globalisation creates new opportunities for crime AND new types of crime across borders.
- Castells: there is now a global criminal economy, networked like the legitimate economy.
- Glenny ('McMafia'): organised crime runs like a transnational business.
- Hobbs & Dunningham: crime is 'glocal' β globally connected but locally rooted.
- Beck: a 'global risk society' of new, manufactured, borderless risks.