NCJ Number
223734
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 24 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2008 Pages: 212-224
Date Published
August 2008
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article provides evidence that the fear of the theft of body parts dominates in communities where poverty and victimization are widespread.
Abstract
The most horrific crime related to organ smuggling across national borders is the killing of a person specifically to harvest his/her organs for sale on the international market. There is no reliable data, however, on whether such crimes occur, and, if so, how prevalent this practice is. There is strong evidence, on the other hand, that there is organized trafficking in body parts conducted by underworld syndicates. Scheper-Hughes (2000) have reported on conditions in Brazil that have been designated by the country’s leading newspaper as the work of a “body Mafia” that has connections to hospital and emergency room personnel, ambulance drivers, and local and State morgues. The syndicate trades in blood, tissues, and organs taken from cadavers. Falsified death certificates are used to conceal the identities of the mutilated corpses. In an attempt to deal with this trafficking, the Brazilian government enacted a “presumed consent” law in 1997, stipulating that unless people declare otherwise while alive, it is legally permissible for medical personnel to remove organs from them when they die. Reliable information about the collection of body parts concerns the routine practice in China of taking organs and tissue from persons executed for criminal offenses. Persuasive anecdotal material suggests that human organ theft and the transnational transportation of body parts is not likely to have a high priority with most traditional organized criminal groups. Currently, the best hypothesis is that most of the traffic in human body parts is conducted by ad hoc groups that are exclusively involved in such activities. Depending on one’s preferred definition, these groups may or may not be regarded as organized crime enterprises. 59 references