International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Transnational crime has become a more visible area of concern for states in the past two decades. The collapse of the Soviet Union led states to reassess their national interests and corresponding policies. States recognized that an international underworld of criminal elements hampered and sometimes derailed programs and policies at home and abroad. Criminal enterprises outside the drugs arena arose that were highly profitable, and in cases such as the trafficking in human beings were even more pernicious to states and societies. By 1995, the US and other states began to classify “international” organized crime as a national security threat. States saw the need to further expand law enforcement beyond their borders, to sign treaties of mutual legal assistance, and to bring multinational organizations to bear on the problem. By 2000, the United Nations had enacted a Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime that institutionalized these goals. In one short decade, international or transnational organized crime had eclipsed the “war on drugs” as the primary concern of global criminal justice policy. Many studies of transnational crime have focused on the phenomenon as a national security issue in the post–Cold War era ( Picarelli 2008 ). The studies tend to focus narrowly on the organization of crime groups and how they undermine the sovereignty ... log in or subscribe to read full text