NCJ Number
177681
Journal
Trends in Organized Crime Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: Fall 1997 Pages: 4-7
Editor(s)
R. Godson,
W. J. Olson,
L. Shelley
Date Published
1997
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This is an introductory summary to 28 excerpts and abstracts of papers that examine the political-criminal nexus in various countries throughout the world, including Russia, Ukraine, Hong Kong, China, Italy, Central and Latin America, Nigeria, and the United States.
Abstract
A political-criminal nexus, the concentration and fusion of political and criminal power, is increasingly reaching the highest levels of many nation-states. Organized crime groups develop collaborative relationships with state authorities in order to access and exploit the political, economic, and social apparatus of the state. To increase the security of their operations, they also attempt to develop arrangements with local and national political and legal authorities. For their part, state authorities seek cooperative relationships with criminal elements for various reasons, such as personal benefits, securing votes and money, and controlling enemies. This issue of "Trends in Organized Crime" presents preliminary reports of the first in-depth collaborative cross- national research study of the political-criminal nexus. The study focuses on the conditions that lead to the merger of professional criminal groups with the political structure in democracies, authoritarian systems, and regimes in transition. The study aims to identify the factors that facilitate the entrenchment of the political-criminal nexus, such as rapid technological change, privatization, or political transition. The objectives of this research project are to determine how these relationships are established and what collaborative activities are undertaken by this nexus, as well as to identify methods of disrupting these ties. The authors uses a similar historical perspective to examine the singular conditions in their societies that have led to particularly strong political-criminal alliances.