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Global Crime: Political Challenges and Responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2011

Mark Galeotti
Affiliation:
Center for Global Affairs, New York University

Extract

The world is movement. People migrate in response to labor needs and human disaster; money and memes flit between countries, and people move almost too quickly to track; the flow of energy and commodities bind consumers to providers in supply chains that neither party can usually envisage. Needless to say, this is as true of criminal activities as any other sphere of human endeavor, especially when it comes to trafficking drugs. According to the United Nations, as of 2010 the trade in opiates generates an annual turnover of up to $65 billion, with cocaine accounting for a further $88 billion. The crudest street gang peddling crack or heroin in a darkened stairwell is part of a complex transnational business, even if its members scarcely know from which country their product originally hails. The roaring torrents of Afghan opiates and Latin American cocaine crash through border checkpoints, leaving corrupted customs officers and pipelines for other illicit transfers in their wake, hollow out political systems, and transform into equally powerful flows of dirty money that in due course wash into every banking system in the world.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

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