Criminal Measures: Counting the Costs of Transnational Crime

Abstract

How substantial are criminal or illicit transactions relative to licit economic exchange? The globalization of crime or “deviant globalization” is, from one perspective, merely globalization unrestrained by law or principle, save for the necessary “black protocols” that facilitate criminal organization and exchange (Deibert, 2013). Indeed, the extension of criminal enterprises across time and space is but one more manifestation of the fluidity or “liquidity” and “compression” that are engendered by, and accelerate, globalization (Harvey, 1991; Baumann, 2000). Parallel to the diversification of corporations in the licit economy, criminal entities are “networked,” “diversified,” strategically managed and “vertically” integrated to achieve “upstream” and “downstream” business “synergies” (Naim, 2005; UNODC, 2007). Yet, the value of transnational criminal activity, such as can be gleaned from publicly available sources, is only a fraction of total global economic activity or gross global product.