Despite stringent financial regulations, illicit proceeds from commercial sexual exploitation in the United States persistently evade detection, revealing significant vulnerabilities in the effectiveness of anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement. This study analyzed a new purpose-built data set of 100 adjudicated cases (2002–2024) and linked property records to investigate how structural and regulatory weaknesses enabled illicit actors to systematically evade AML controls. The findings reveal that despite the expansion of risk-based AML policies, illicit actors evade detection through nominee ownership structures, unregulated real estate transactions, and financing manipulation. Weak inter-agency coordination, fragmented financial intelligence sharing, and the failure to prosecute financial enablers further entrench these illicit flows. This paper critiques the overreliance on compliance-driven AML models and argues for a governance shift toward proactive financial disruption strategies. It calls for improved transparency of beneficial ownership, greater accountability of the financial sector, and targeted enforcement mechanisms to dismantle illicit financial networks linked to criminal enterprises.
Kinship-based organised crime (KBOC) has attracted growing media attention in Northern Europe but remains under-researched in the academic literature. To address this gap, a scoping review was conducted to systematically map how KBOC has been conceptualised and operationalised across diverse geographical, cultural, and research contexts, thereby identifying commonalities, variations, and limitations in existing approaches to the study of KBOC. The analysis identified eight recurring themes through which KBOC is conceptualised and operationalised in the existing literature: intergenerational transmission of crime, concentration of criminal activity, overlap between familial and criminal structures, intermarriage between criminally involved families, marginalisation, governance-related crime, organised criminal activity, and the use of violence. Although these themes vary in their prominence and operationalisation across studies, together they illustrate the different ways in which kinship is understood as relevant to the structure and organisation of criminal activity. The review thus provides a conceptual synthesis of recurring dimensions in the literature, without suggesting that these dimensions are exhaustive or necessarily present in every KBOC network.
This paper examines the relationship between criminal governance and the internationalization of organized crime, using the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) expansion towards Europe as a case study. It argues that governance can facilitate the transnational expansion of criminal organizations by fostering internal cohesion, regulating illicit markets, and enabling civilian control. Drawing on the PCC’s trajectory from a prison-based organization in Brazil to a transnational actor, the analysis identifies a multi stage causal mechanism that started with internal governance—based on the imposition of rules and the dissemination of a shared ideological framework— which enabled PCC to maintain cohesion and coordinate members across geographically dispersed settings. Second, governance within the criminal market provided greater predictability to illicit transactions, strengthened the group’s legitimacy among criminal actors, and facilitated alliances with Bolivian cocaine producers and European mafias. Finally, although to a lesser extent, the PCC’s involvement in civilian governance—particularly in strategic territories like the Baixada Santista—played a critical role in consolidating its presence and projecting influence into European markets. Using the PCC as a theory-building case, the study contributes to the broader literature on criminal governance by providing an analytical framework whose applicability to other criminal organizations that can be examined in future comparative research.
This paper examines the concept of legitimate power through the leadership dynamics between Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a drug cartel leader, and the Tivoli Gardens community in Jamaica. Drawing on French and Raven’s framework of social power, it examines how legitimate power was constructed and sustained within the Coke-Tivoli context. The analysis identifies a necessity-driven legitimacy, whereby Coke addressed “wicked problems” of poverty, unemployment, and insecurity through service provision, reciprocal trust, and a survival-based social contract that fostered loyalty and a level of voluntary compliance. His shared identity with Tivoli Gardens further generated representational-symbolic legitimacy, reinforcing mutuality and extending his influence beyond material provision. The paper also explores the moral and operational dimensions of his authority as both protector and enforcer. Situating the Coke–Tivoli relationship within broader debates on transnational criminal organisations, communities, and the state, the analysis conceptualises legitimate power as relational and contextual, calling for a rethinking of legitimacy as a fluid, co-constructed process in contexts where state functions are challenge.
