Chapter 1:A Historical Overview of Transnational Crime
The interest intransnational crime took off in earnest during the 1990s, amid significantpolitical and economic developments in the international system. The end of theCold War, the demise of the Soviet Union shortly afterward, and the emergenceof new states in Eastern Europe in this period marked the beginning of a newera. By the mid-1990s, the relatively orderly Cold War system had given way toa world of greater uncertainty and an ever-growing number of perceived threatsto nation-states. These new developments, coupled with immense technologicalchanges in recent years, have heightened our concern over nation-states'vulnerability to cross-border criminal activity.
This chapterfirst explores early attention to transnational actors in the social sciences.Next, the chapter traces the evolution of the term transnational crime. Third,the chapter briefly looks at historical instances of transnational crime. Thenthe chapter examines the growing interest in transnational crime in the 1990sat both the theoretical and practical levels. Finally, the chapter concludeswith a brief look at the scope of transnational crime today.
The Concept of Transnationalism in the Social Sciences
There have beena number of references to transnationalism, transnational actors, andtransnational organizations in the literature of various disciplines over thepast three decades. In the 1970s, international relations introduced theconcept of the transnational actor. The focus on nonstate transnational actorsgrew out of pluralist theories of the state and its decision-making process. Indomestic politics, pluralist theorists have always argued that politicaloutputs resulted from competition among different interest groups.
Similarly, atthe international level, scholars began to focus their attention on the role ofnon-state entities in the international system, challenging conventionalrealist assumptions about the nation-state as the principal actor in the internationalsystem. Transnational actors engaged in a whole host of cross-border activitiesand processes, involving the movement of money, information, and people acrossfrontiers. The actors might be government bureaucrats or their agencies, whooften establish ties with their counterparts in other countries, or they couldbe private actors pursuing their interests in different countries. It wasargued that the communications and actions of transnational actors greatlyaffected international political outcomes. At times, transnational actors couldtake actions running counter to their own country's interests.
In the sameperiod, Huntington dissected the features of transnational organizations.Huntington defined these organizations as having operations and activitieslocated in two or more countries. Transnational organizations, according toHuntington, seek to mobilize their resources and optimize their strategies toefficiently penetrate the territories in which they operate. Rosenau conciselydefined transnational processes as processes whereby international relationsconducted by governments have been supplemented by relations among privateindividuals, groups, and societies that can and do have important consequencesfor the course of events.
Transnational organizationsalso became important to political and economic theories of dependency andunderdevelopment in the 1970s. These scholars turned their attention toward thegrowing phenomenon of multinational corporations, also termed transnationalcorporations, examining the impact on the economies of less-developed countriesof transnational corporations headquartered in advanced industrializedsocieties. Many argued that the exploitation by transnational corporations ofpoor countries established a dependency relationship, resulting inunderdevelopment of dependent economies and rampant political corruption amongthe elite of dependent countries. Moreover, profits, rather than beingreinvested in the country where the corporation operates, were merely transferredback to the firm's home country, ensuring that benefits to poor countries wereminimal.
Scholars suchas Braithwaite studied specific linkages between transnational corporations andpolitical corruption. The U.N. Center on Transnational Corporations exploredthe long-term effects resulting from the ongoing relationship betweentransnational corporations and less-developed countries. These studiesproliferated in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was at this time that the conceptof transnational crime entered the criminology lexicon.
Evolution of the Concept of Transnational Crime
Although practicalinterest in transnational crime by policymakers and law enforcement officialsemerged more concretely in the 1990s, transnational crime entered the discourseof criminology in the 1970s at roughly the same time that transnationalismentered the vocabulary of other social sciences. However, early references totransnational crime did not delineate a precise criminological phenomenon.Rather, transnational was interchanged with international or globaldevelopments.
The FifthUnited Nations Congress on Crime Prevention in 1975 is where many consider theterm to have been actually coined. Yet it is unclear whether the term at thattime referred to a distinct criminological phenomenon or whether it referredsimply to economic crimes by transnational corporations in the sense understoodby dependency theorists. During the 1980s, however, transnational crime came todescribe a much broader array of criminal activities. This coincided with anincrease in attention to narcotics trafficking, which had become a priority ofU.S. law enforcement ever since the war on drugs had been declared by the Nixonadministration, and efforts were redoubled during the Reagan years. Other criminalactivities included the smuggling of illegal aliens, arms smuggling, currencyoffenses, fraud, and terrorism.
It was also inthis period that a precise and parsimonious definition of transnational crimewas offered by Bossard in Transnational Crime and Criminal Law. According toBossard, transnational crime is an activity that is considered a criminaloffense by at least two countries. Bossard’s conclusions noted thattransnational crime is as much a political as a legal problem, that thephenomenon is largely influenced by the development of world problems and thatit takes advantage of all forms of progress, especially in internationaltransport, telecommunication and computers. These observations were confirmedby developments in the 1990s.
By the finaldecade of the 20th century, there emerged a stronger discussion oftransnational crime, both at the theoretical and practical levels. Cross-bordercrime had become a key security issue for policymakers and law enforcementagencies in Europe and the United States. Their efforts increasingly shiftedfrom domestic organized crime to the international arena and transnationalcrime. The next section looks at current understanding of transnational crime.
Current Understanding of Transnational Crime
The termtransnational crime now belongs to the everyday lexicon not only ofcriminologists but also of policymakers, law enforcement officials, and thepublic. Although the concept of transnational crime could seldom be found inany legal text or law enforcement handbook before the last decade, today theterm is commonly employed by specialists and nonspecialists alike. Yet,transnational crime is not a legal concept; it lacks a precise juridicalmeaning. It remains a concept within criminology that describes socialphenomena. The term is both sociological, because we are concerned withunderstanding criminal groups or networks, and political, because transnationalcriminal actors operate within an international environment structured bynation-states and by politics.
However, thereremains little consensus over the terminology of this social scientificphenomenon. For example, many scholars highlight the organized nature oftransnational organized crime or TOC. Others reject TOC's organized nature,arguing that viewing it as organized distorts our understanding of cross-bordercrime rather than helping to explain it. Indeed, the use of the term organizedcrime has drawn widespread criticism. The term was introduced by anticorruptionreformers in the United States during the nineteenth century. Back then,organized crime referred to the local political corruption extant in large U.S.cities, where politicians and the police protected gambling and prostitutionoperations. It was only in the postwar era that the term evolved into one thatreferred to organized associations of gangsters. Today, while many seeorganized crime as having features such as hierarchical structure, division oflabor, organizational codes or taboos, continuity in operations, the practiceof corruption, and a capability to inflict violence, numerous experts haveshown that criminal activities are often not at all organized but instead arequite disorganized.
It is clearthat the degree of organization of criminal activity can vary dramatically, withsome groups possessing hierarchical structures and other criminals operatingwithin loosely structured, flexible networks. This is so because illegalmarkets operate like other markets, with many groups supplying goods andservices and forming linkages in myriad ways. Consequently, critics argue thatthe term organized crime merely simplifies and mystifies the complexities ofcriminal activities and functions.
This criticismalso extends to transnational organized crime. The notion of transnational organizedcrime produces an image of numerous tightly knit international criminal groupswhen, in fact, criminal structures are less stable and networks are morediffuse. At the same time, however, scholars tend to see crime as having anecessary degree of organization. Precisely because it involves criminalactivities that cross national boundaries, some degree of organization isusually required, generally a considerable amount. Nevertheless, although agrowing number of scholars and practitioners make use of the more controversialterm TOC, this volume views transnational crime as being generally lessstrictly organized.
Another concernis that transnational crime is frequently confused with other terms thatdescribe the same phenomena—notably international or global crime. Thedistinction between transnational and international crime is particularlyblurred. Those who distinguish between the two argue that international crimesare crimes prohibited by international laws, norms, treaties, and customs,whereas transnational crimes are specifically concerned with acts criminalizedby the laws of more than one country. Yet others view the internationalizationof criminal law and prohibitions as the main feature characterizingtransnational crime.
Apart fromthese terminological issues, there is also little agreement over the formaldefinition of transnational crime. Bossard asserts that transnational crimesimply refers to acts that violate the laws of more than one country. TheUnited Nations has adopted a similar approach, defining transnational crime asoffences whose inception, prevention and/or direct or indirect effects involvedmore than one country. Other scholars prefer broader sociological definitionsof transnational crime. For example, Passas defines transnational crime asavoidable and unnecessary harm to society, which is serious enough to warrantstate intervention and similar to other kinds of acts criminalized in thecountries concerned or by international law and where offenders or victims findthemselves in—or operated through—different jurisdictions. This definition aimsat a wider understanding of crime, much in the tradition of sociologist EdwinSutherland.
In short,although the term transnational crime is more widely used today than ever before,it remains a much-debated concept. Differences between transnational andinternational crime are also less clear in practice. Nevertheless, theintroduction and widespread use of the term transnational crime among lawenforcement officials and policymakers has helped focus debate about securitypriorities in the 1990s. It gives cross-border criminal activities a moreconcrete label and has prompted better categorization and understanding ofthese activities. The growing attention to transnational crime itself reflectsthe way in which law enforcement officials and government policymakers havechanged their perception of security and law enforcement priorities. Thesechanges with respect to crime resulted from international developments andchanges in domestic attitudes and priorities. Before turning to thedevelopments of recent years, this chapter will briefly look at some historicalexamples of how changing international circumstances and domestic politicsrefocused policy with respect to transnational criminal activities. The nextsection covers the historical cases of slavery, piracy, and smuggling.