In 2002, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a report entitled Results of a pilot survey of forty selected organized criminal groups in sixteen countries which established five models of organised crime. This paper reviews these and other common organised crime models and drug trafficking models, and applies them to cases of South East Asian drug trafficking in the Australian state of Queensland. The study tests the following hypotheses: (1) South-East Asian drug trafficking groups in Queensland will operate within a criminal network or core group; (2) Wholesale drug distributors in Queensland will not fit consistently under any particular UN organised crime model; and (3) Street dealers will have no organisational structure. The study concluded that drug trafficking or importation closely resembles a criminal network or core group structure. Wholesale dealers did not fit consistently into any UN organised crime model. Street dealers had no organisational structure as an organisational structure is typically found in mid- to high-level drug trafficking.

Transnational criminal groups have demonstrated their ability to subvert traditional policing initiatives by a single state and thus, responses to TOC must be “extensive in scope, multilateral in form and to the extent possible, global in reach” (Godson and Williams 2001, 329). Given the importance of international policing efforts in addressing TOC, there is a paucity of empirical research conducted into its overall effectiveness and the existence and/or use of “best practice” models. There is also limited understanding of how law enforcement agencies interact and cooperate in an international context and whether such collaboration, results in tangible and positive outcomes for investigations. This paper will examine several examples of best practice in policing TOC and the elements which are critical to any successful law enforcement response to TOC.

Typologies are intended to assist researchers in understanding complex social phenomena. This paper reviews the current literature on organised crime typologies and argues that the majority of organised crime typologies are reflected to some extent in a typology developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2002. Organised crime typologies can be categorised into three groups: models that focus on the physical structure and operation of an OCG, the activities of OCGs and the social, cultural and historical conditions that facilitate organised crime activity. This paper will only discuss models that examine the physical structure and operation of an OCG; the UNODC typology is exclusively focused on structural elements. Typologies on organised crime structure have developed largely in isolation from each other and appear disparate. This paper will analyse the formation of each typology to establish their individual elements. It will then identify which typologies and their respective characteristics can be aligned with or distinguished from the UN typology. The value of this review is that it will enable greater uniformity and consistency in academic discussion on organised crime typologies.

The study of terrorism includes the study of terror networks. The key method of studying networks is Social Network Analysis (SNA). This article aims to determine whether SNA can add value to the study of terror networks. We examine the existing research into terror networks including those that use SNA to reveal the nature of those networks. One of the most constructive approaches is the study of resilience of terrorist groups. We conclude that the use of SNA to study resilience will make the best contribution to ongoing research into terrorist networks and provides a good focus for both theory and practice of counterterrorism.

The significance of transnational organized crime as both a global and national threat has only recently been elevated as a 'clear and present danger' for international security. The varieties of cross-border crime have become a concern for both 'low' (domestic police) and 'high' security (national and regional security). A consequential challenge has been to integrate the national, regional and international security response such that traditional policing (criminal justice), military and national security agencies can work more effectively and seamlessly in reducing the harm of transnational organized crime. This chapter discusses the challenges of effective counter measure against organized crime and reviews the efforts of ASEAN and others.

In recent times considerable research attention has been directed to understanding dark networks, especially criminal and terrorist networks. Dark networks are those in which member motivations are self rather than public interested, achievements come at the cost of other individuals, groups or societies and, in addition, their activities are both ‘covert and illegal’ (Raab & Milward, 2003: 415). This ‘darkness’ has implications for the way in which these networks are structured, the strategies adopted and their recruitment methods. Such entities exhibit distinctive operating characteristics including most notably the tension between creating an efficient network structure while retaining the ability to hide from public view while avoiding catastrophic collapse should one member cooperate with authorities (Bouchard 2007). While theoretical emphasis has been on criminal and terrorist networks, recent work has demonstrated that corrupt police networks exhibit some distinctive characteristics. In particular, these entities operate within the shadows of a host organisation - the Police Force and distort the functioning of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ as the interface between the law abiding citizenry and the criminal society. Drawing on data derived from the Queensland Fitzgerald Commission of Enquiry into Police Misconduct and related documents, this paper examines the motivations, structural properties and operational practices of corrupt police networks and compares and contrasts these with other dark networks with ‘bright’ public service networks. The paper confirms the structural differences between dark corrupt police networks and bright networks and suggests. However, structural embeddedness alone is found to be an insufficient theoretical explanation for member involvement in networks and that a set of elements combine to impact decision-making. Although offering important insights into network participation, the paper’s findings are especially pertinent in identifying additional points of intervention for police corruption networks.