Chapter 3: Measuring and Researching Transnational Crime
Scholars in criminology and criminal justice have long lamentedthe lack of research in international criminal justice and criminology,acknowledged the challenges for conducting good research in these areas, andwelcomed the growth of research in recent years. This chapter examines thespecific problems of researching transnational crime: how to measure andanalyze it. Very little methodological literature is available on the difficultiesof studying transnational crime, and traditional criminological researchtraining pays little attention to the study of transnational crime. Thisinattention to the particularities of international/comparative research isreflected in criminological research methods courses. Future scholars need tobe trained from the very beginning of their research careers to conduct, andmost important, to dare to conductinternational research, including research on transnational crime. This ischallenging to do because at this stage (1) international research is often outof students' knowledge and ability reach; (2) what must be included in such acourse is rarely included in research methods textbooks, and even denigratedtherein; (3) traditional research methods courses ignore the challenges ofresearching in developing countries or conflict-ridden societies'; (4)“hands-on” assignments are hampered by not being present at the research siteoverseas; (5) such additions to the course saturate the already dense curriculumfor methods courses; and (6) criminology students are rarely obliged to learnforeign languages in order to conduct research in foreign countries.
The transnational nature of crime and how to measure itdefy many traditional research methods, as we will see in this chapter. That isdue to the mobility and elusiveness of offenders and victims, innovation in modus operandi, and dangerousness ofthe research subject. Much transnational crime research uses anecdotalevidence—unsystematically gathered or analyzed data, case studies of limitedgeneralizability, or indirect data gathered from expert perceptions. However,new, innovative methods are being developed that are promising avenues forfuture research.
This chapter takes a critical look at the research methods used intransnational crime research, but it has a positive outlook on how new methodsare being developed in this field. Therefore, the chapter first outlines crimemeasurement as developed by conventional criminologists and how it does or doesnot work in providing adequate measures for transnational crime. It thendescribes some of the better composite analyses available for transnationalcrime that rely on triangulating data sources and methods of measurement.Finally, the chapter ends by highlighting recent advances in knowledge in thearea of measurement and analytical methods for transnational crime. Specialattention is devoted to qualitative measurement of transnational crime: Thefield is often fixated on quantitative measurement, but qualitative measuresare also useful in describing the nature and extent of transnational crime. Thechapter ends with an acknowledgment of the political nature of the data andmethods used in transnational crime research.
General Measures of Crime and Their Usefulness for MeasuringTransnational Crime
The purpose of crime measurement is to obtain valid, reliable, andin the case of international crime measurement, comparable crime data. Thisincludes (a) official data (that gathered by government agencies—e.g., police,border patrol and customs, courts, corrections, public health authorities), (b)victimization data (that gathered through surveys of samples of the generalpopulation, inquiring as to their victimization), and (c) self-report data(that gathered through surveys of samples of the general population, inquiringabout their involvement in crime or anti-social behavior). Each data source hasits pros and cons and not all are directly comparable to each other: rather,scholars generally agree that they are complementary. The general rule of thumbis that the closer the data gatherer is to the crime itself (in space andtime), the more valid and reliable the data will be. That is because thecriminal justice system generally acts as a funnel, filtering and sometimesdistorting the input into the criminal justice system at each level. Members ofthe general public may experience a crime, but not all will call the police orsee their case through to sentencing. Members of the general public may also commitcrimes, but not all will be detected, recorded, arrested, charged, arraigned,convicted, and sentenced to prison. At each stage in the criminal justiceprocess, attrition occurs, and at the exit from the criminal justice system,the final crime picture is a selective, and usually biased, sample of theoriginal incidents.
The developments in alternatives to official crime measurement—theadvent of victimization and self-report surveys—are some of the importantcontributions of 20th-century criminology. However, most of these conventionalmethods of measuring the nature and extent of crime quantitatively areproblematic in providing measures of the extent and nature of transnationalcrime. First, they are problematic in the same way as for measuring common,domestic crime comparatively in a cross-national context: Countries havedifferent cultural norms, legal systems, different legal definitions, anddifferent ways of detecting, recording, and counting crime. One could arguethat countries that have ratified the UN Convention on Transnational OrganizedCrime have signed on to a harmonized international definition of transnationalorganized crime: however, thedefinition is not operationalized for social science purposes in the conventionnor has any uniform data-gathering strategy, apart from that used to measuredrug trafficking, been proposed. But beyond these problems of definition andrecording practices, the nature of transnational crime and its relatively newacknowledgment as an area of interest for criminologists (and others) meansthat conventional crime data sources either do not include transnational crimeor, by the nature of the method used, could not.
Data sources for crime are most prevalent in the developed world,and in particular, in parts of the developed world with active criminal justiceacademic and management capacity—where expertise has been developed on how toresearch crime and where government agencies find that “evidence” useful intheir work. Most middle-and low-income countries have very few data sources tochoose from, and official data may be all there is available, since at minimum,police around the world are routinely expected to keep some kind of record oftheir activities in detecting crime. Increasingly, public health officials havebeen called on to aid in providing data related to homicides and assaults; evenif those wounded due to crime do not go to a police station to report theirvictimization, they will often go to the emergency room for medical treatmentwhere the assault can be recorded in public health statistics. However, in thedeveloping world, this is often problematic, especially in rural areas whereaccess to medical facilities can be nonexistent. But what criminologists knowfor sure about official data is that it reflects the gathering agency's workculture and human and technical capabilities, and where crime figures arepublic and politicized, the political pressures to show that crime isincreasing or decreasing. Most important, official data miss all crime notreported or detected, which depends on the seriousness of the crime, trust inthe police, fear of offender reprisals, the accessibility of the police,communication, and the incentive structure to report crime (e.g., insurancecoverage, access to related public services). Thus, the dark (i.e., unreported)figure of crime in official crime data can be substantial and is the majorreason that criminologists in the 20th century developed new measures of crimethat do not depend on the consent or authorization of the State.
Despite the many disadvantages of official crime data, they aremost likely at the present moment to provide some measure of transnationalcrime in countries where these acts are criminalized. However, they often makeinferences about the transnational nature of the offense that is detected andrecorded by the authorities. It is importance to remember that all the crimesconsidered transnational by the United Nations—drug trafficking, humantrafficking, stolen property, counterfeiting, cybercrime and fraud, commercialvices, extortion and racketeering, money laundering, and corruption can also bedomestic crimes. In most countries, the transnational nature of crime isinferred either from the crime itself or from limited data about the offenders,victims, or substance seized. So it is common to find inferences that seeminglydomestic crimes are transnational due to the nationality of the offenders orthe nature of the offense. Drug trafficking is a good example. Drug traffickingis often assumed to be transnational in nature, but drugs are also produced andtrafficked domestically. For example, the 2012 World Drug Report notes thatcannabis production is increasingly widespread, localized, and small scale,making it hard to estimate and detect. The US Drug Enforcement Administrationruns cocaine and heroin drug signature programs whereby toxicologists candetermine the national origin of thedrugs seized, thus determining their transnational nature. But synthetic drugsoften have no signature of national origin, although they maybe part oftransnational crime. Human trafficking is another example of blurredmeasurement of transnationality. By officials questioning a victim of humantrafficking as to his or her citizenship status, we can infer that he or she isa victim of transnational human trafficking (as opposed in interstate orintrastate trafficking). Again, any inference is of course problematic. Aforeign national could be smuggled to the United States or enter the countrylegally and then trafficked interstate once here and thus be a victim of adomestic crime of human trafficking, not a transnational one. Furthermore, detailing the transnational nature of crime—theexact origin of the goods seized, for example—can be very problematic for somecrimes that prima facie, appear to be transnational in nature.
Operationalizing transnational is fundamental for theory developmentin transnational crime research. Much of transnational crime research isdominated by scholars of organized crime, and transnational crime is seldomperpetuated by lone offenders but rather by those working in groups. A centralquestion in organized crime research is how these groups take advantage ofglobalization. Campana analyzes the transnational expansion of a Neapolitancamorra via wiretap data. Challenging common assumptions about the territorialexpansion of mafia type groups, he finds that the group engages in functionaldiversification abroad but forges few international alliances and is still veryclosely tied to the territory of origin. Similarly, Varese, in a case study ofthe Russian mafia in Italy, finds that the migration of an escapee from Russiato Italy creates an outpost that is still heavily dependent on the home base.Thus, the extent to which offending is or becomes transnational is a keyresearch question in the field of transnational (organized) crime and dependson a direct measurement, not an inference, of transnationality.
Apart from the general difficulties of measuring the transnationalnature of crime, many transnational crimes are new to criminal justiceauthorities, and any official recording of such “new” crimes is problematic.Routine crime collection data from the United Nations (the UN-CTS) has nottypically included transnational crime but rather homicide, assaults, sexualviolence, robbery, kidnapping, theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary.However, in the 10th UN-CTS (covering 2005–2006) member states were asked toreport their official statistics on participation in organized criminal groups,human trafficking, and the smuggling of migrants, using the definitions frominternational law. Relatively few countries were able to respond and not allused the definitions from international law at the national level. Forparticipation in organized groups, 36 countries were able to providepolice-generated data from 2006, showing a median rate of 1.4 crimes per100,000 population in 2006. But only 20 of those 36 followed the definition ininternational law. For human trafficking, 52 countries were able to respondwith police data for 2006, showing a median of 2 cases per 100,000 population,and 33 of these 52 countries followed the definition of human trafficking ininternational law. For migrant smuggling, 45 countries were able to provide data,33 of which followed the definition from international law, showing a median of1.4 police recorded offenses per 100,00 population. In addition, a recent 2011 Global Study on Homicide conducted by UNODC made an attempt toestimate the proportion of homicides related to organized crime and gangs. Only 27 countries were able to providethis information, which suggests that this proportion is higher in the Americasthan in Asia and Europe.
If measurement is problematic, so is under-detection by criminaljustice authorities. The United States has criminalized human trafficking andestablished mechanisms and training for detecting and recording it. Farrell,McDevitt, and Fahy, in an analysis of human-trafficking incidents in the UnitedStates, analyzed data from a survey of a national sample of municipal lawenforcement agencies. They reported that less than 10% of these agenciesidentified any human-trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Those agencies thatwere more likely to identify cases of human trafficking were the larger ones,but the two most important predictors of human-trafficking identification bythe police were the perception of the agency leader about the problem at thelocal level, as well as the steps taken to train officers to identify these incidentsand respond to them. Van Dijk offers two more reasons why official data at thenational level may not capture complex or organized transnational crime well:corruption and political interference. Inaddition, lack of coordination and cooperation among police agencies,domestically and internationally, is a factor in the lack of detection oftransnational crime.
An important alternative to official statistics are victimizationsurveys. Within samples of the general population, a proportion of those surveyedwill admit to having experienced (as victims) certain kinds of victimization.These surveys ask behavior specific questions, not legalistic ones, thus makingcomparison across national jurisdictions possible. In that way, they present anadvantage over official statistics. They discern offenses both reported andunreported to the police, another important advantage over official statistics.Explanatory variables can be added to the survey, thus aiding in explaining andpredicting victimization and thus designing crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages of victimization surveys relate to sampling and the surveymethod; some victims may not reveal the truth (for which specialized surveysmay be needed, such as in the case of gender-based violence); homicide cannotbe measured because of the lack of a living victim to be interviewed. TheInternational Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) has been administered in five wavessince 1989.
Conventional victimization surveys are problematic for measuringtransnational crime. Van Dijk, in spite of his lifetime work supporting themethod of the victimization survey around the globe, is one of the authors whohas critiqued victimization surveys for being inattentive, or inappropriate, interms of providing useful data on transnational organized crime. Given that theICVS is undertaken around the globe, in theory its data would offer the bestprospects for inferring about the transnational nature of victimization.However, this is not the case. The ICVS, like many of its national counterpartssuch as the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), queries itsrespondents about conventional, domestic crimes including motor vehicle theft,burglaries, robbery, pickpocketing, assault, and sexual offenses. Itsquestioning is at the individual and household level, whereas manytransnational crimes cause collective harm that is not perceived at thepersonal, local level. And finally, it is unlikely to detect victimization thatoccurs relatively rarely in the population, such as human trafficking forsexual exploitation.
Expanding on van Dijk’s criticism, the first problem withvictimization surveys is that they are constrained to measure a limited numberof crimes, and none of the crimes included in victimization surveys are transnationalin nature. One could argue that even the aforementioned list of domestic crimescould have a transnational component, and that is true. But it is unlikely thata victim, even if queried, would know this. If your automobile was stolen toprovide parts for sale in another country, would you as a victim know this when surveyed? If your homewere burglarized or your wallet stolen, would you know that the offender(s)were part of a transnational criminal organization?
Asecond problem with victimization surveys is that they are based on householdsamples. It is unlikely that certain victims of transnational crime would bepart of the sample of households for a victimization survey. How likely is itthat a victim of human trafficking would appear in the sample, given what weknow about how they are isolated from social life by their traffickers? Andeven if they did appear in the sample, how likely is it that they would revealinformation about their situation? Victimization survey staff would have to receivespecialized training to gather this kind of sensitive information, and foreignlanguage capacities would have to be developed as well.
The third reason that victimization surveys do not routinelycapture much transnational crime is that the nature of transnationaltrafficking in goods (drugs, arms, fraudulent pharmaceuticals, diamonds,animals, and plants) does not provide us with direct, discernible human victimsto question. It is thus important not to criticize victim surveys for somethingthey were not designed to do.
The fourth reason relates to the problem of counting:Transnational crime, because of the movement across borders, is often betterconceptualized as a process than an event. It may indeed involve severalcrimes, and it occurs over time. To illustrate, let us suppose that ahuman-trafficking victim is kidnapped from her home country and taken to atransit country, then transferred to a destination country; drugged or rapedinto submission; deprived of her identity documents and money; and threatenedor forced to commit harmful or illegal acts. Let us suppose that avictimization survey interviewer comes upon this person in arandom-digit-dialed telephone interview in the United States. Now, humantrafficking is not directly queried as a type of victimization in the NCVS, butsexual assault, robbery, theft, and simple and aggravated assault are included.However, because of the counting rules of the National Crime VictimizationSurvey, much of the ordeal of this victim would not be recorded; either itwould fall outside the six-month recall period or only the most seriousvictimization events would be included in the final crime count. Furthermore,the NCVS does not include victimization that occurs outside the United States.
Another alternative to official crime statistics are self-reportsurveys. These are administered to the general population, usually to youngpeople, but the technique has also been used with prison inmates. With generalsamples of young people, many will admit (self-report) various kinds ofantisocial and criminal behavior. This kind of questioning usesbehavior-specific questions, thus maximizing comparability by avoiding theproblems of stigmatizing and complex legal definitions. Both detected and undetectedoffenses are discovered through self-report surveys, thus getting at the “darkfigure” of crime in official statistics. Variables of etiological interest canbe added, as in victimization, to explain or predict offending and thusincrease the benefits of the results in formulating crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages relate again to the typical problems of sampling and surveys. Inaddition, validity can be problematic if offenders are prone to lie orexaggerate and if it is not possible to ask about very serious crime. (Homicidestatistics, thus, are the realm of official statistics [police or coroner].)
The International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD) has beenconducted twice since the early 1990s. But self-report surveys do not typicallycapture transnational crime either. Self-report surveys can and do ask aboutdrug trafficking. But they do not typically delve into the transnational natureof the crime, nor do they ask extensive questions about planning andco-offending. The number of crimes and the number of follow-up questions on thecharacteristics of offenders andcrimes is limited in self-report surveys. And because many low- and midleveltraffickers are shielded from knowing who is part of the largerdrug-trafficking network, the self-report survey method, which is administeredon an individual basis, isn't likely to generate much data on transnationaloffending networks of modus operandi. This method, however, holds some promisein terms of its expansion to measure transnational offending, were it to beused in focused youth and prison samples.
Chapter 3: Measuring and Researching Transnational Crime
Scholars in criminology and criminal justice have long lamentedthe lack of research in international criminal justice and criminology,acknowledged the challenges for conducting good research in these areas, andwelcomed the growth of research in recent years. This chapter examines thespecific problems of researching transnational crime: how to measure andanalyze it. Very little methodological literature is available on the difficultiesof studying transnational crime, and traditional criminological researchtraining pays little attention to the study of transnational crime. Thisinattention to the particularities of international/comparative research isreflected in criminological research methods courses. Future scholars need tobe trained from the very beginning of their research careers to conduct, andmost important, to dare to conductinternational research, including research on transnational crime. This ischallenging to do because at this stage (1) international research is often outof students' knowledge and ability reach; (2) what must be included in such acourse is rarely included in research methods textbooks, and even denigratedtherein; (3) traditional research methods courses ignore the challenges ofresearching in developing countries or conflict-ridden societies'; (4)“hands-on” assignments are hampered by not being present at the research siteoverseas; (5) such additions to the course saturate the already dense curriculumfor methods courses; and (6) criminology students are rarely obliged to learnforeign languages in order to conduct research in foreign countries.
The transnational nature of crime and how to measure itdefy many traditional research methods, as we will see in this chapter. That isdue to the mobility and elusiveness of offenders and victims, innovation in modus operandi, and dangerousness ofthe research subject. Much transnational crime research uses anecdotalevidence—unsystematically gathered or analyzed data, case studies of limitedgeneralizability, or indirect data gathered from expert perceptions. However,new, innovative methods are being developed that are promising avenues forfuture research.
This chapter takes a critical look at the research methods used intransnational crime research, but it has a positive outlook on how new methodsare being developed in this field. Therefore, the chapter first outlines crimemeasurement as developed by conventional criminologists and how it does or doesnot work in providing adequate measures for transnational crime. It thendescribes some of the better composite analyses available for transnationalcrime that rely on triangulating data sources and methods of measurement.Finally, the chapter ends by highlighting recent advances in knowledge in thearea of measurement and analytical methods for transnational crime. Specialattention is devoted to qualitative measurement of transnational crime: Thefield is often fixated on quantitative measurement, but qualitative measuresare also useful in describing the nature and extent of transnational crime. Thechapter ends with an acknowledgment of the political nature of the data andmethods used in transnational crime research.
General Measures of Crime and Their Usefulness for MeasuringTransnational Crime
The purpose of crime measurement is to obtain valid, reliable, andin the case of international crime measurement, comparable crime data. Thisincludes (a) official data (that gathered by government agencies—e.g., police,border patrol and customs, courts, corrections, public health authorities), (b)victimization data (that gathered through surveys of samples of the generalpopulation, inquiring as to their victimization), and (c) self-report data(that gathered through surveys of samples of the general population, inquiringabout their involvement in crime or anti-social behavior). Each data source hasits pros and cons and not all are directly comparable to each other: rather,scholars generally agree that they are complementary. The general rule of thumbis that the closer the data gatherer is to the crime itself (in space andtime), the more valid and reliable the data will be. That is because thecriminal justice system generally acts as a funnel, filtering and sometimesdistorting the input into the criminal justice system at each level. Members ofthe general public may experience a crime, but not all will call the police orsee their case through to sentencing. Members of the general public may also commitcrimes, but not all will be detected, recorded, arrested, charged, arraigned,convicted, and sentenced to prison. At each stage in the criminal justiceprocess, attrition occurs, and at the exit from the criminal justice system,the final crime picture is a selective, and usually biased, sample of theoriginal incidents.
The developments in alternatives to official crime measurement—theadvent of victimization and self-report surveys—are some of the importantcontributions of 20th-century criminology. However, most of these conventionalmethods of measuring the nature and extent of crime quantitatively areproblematic in providing measures of the extent and nature of transnationalcrime. First, they are problematic in the same way as for measuring common,domestic crime comparatively in a cross-national context: Countries havedifferent cultural norms, legal systems, different legal definitions, anddifferent ways of detecting, recording, and counting crime. One could arguethat countries that have ratified the UN Convention on Transnational OrganizedCrime have signed on to a harmonized international definition of transnationalorganized crime: however, thedefinition is not operationalized for social science purposes in the conventionnor has any uniform data-gathering strategy, apart from that used to measuredrug trafficking, been proposed. But beyond these problems of definition andrecording practices, the nature of transnational crime and its relatively newacknowledgment as an area of interest for criminologists (and others) meansthat conventional crime data sources either do not include transnational crimeor, by the nature of the method used, could not.
Data sources for crime are most prevalent in the developed world,and in particular, in parts of the developed world with active criminal justiceacademic and management capacity—where expertise has been developed on how toresearch crime and where government agencies find that “evidence” useful intheir work. Most middle-and low-income countries have very few data sources tochoose from, and official data may be all there is available, since at minimum,police around the world are routinely expected to keep some kind of record oftheir activities in detecting crime. Increasingly, public health officials havebeen called on to aid in providing data related to homicides and assaults; evenif those wounded due to crime do not go to a police station to report theirvictimization, they will often go to the emergency room for medical treatmentwhere the assault can be recorded in public health statistics. However, in thedeveloping world, this is often problematic, especially in rural areas whereaccess to medical facilities can be nonexistent. But what criminologists knowfor sure about official data is that it reflects the gathering agency's workculture and human and technical capabilities, and where crime figures arepublic and politicized, the political pressures to show that crime isincreasing or decreasing. Most important, official data miss all crime notreported or detected, which depends on the seriousness of the crime, trust inthe police, fear of offender reprisals, the accessibility of the police,communication, and the incentive structure to report crime (e.g., insurancecoverage, access to related public services). Thus, the dark (i.e., unreported)figure of crime in official crime data can be substantial and is the majorreason that criminologists in the 20th century developed new measures of crimethat do not depend on the consent or authorization of the State.
Despite the many disadvantages of official crime data, they aremost likely at the present moment to provide some measure of transnationalcrime in countries where these acts are criminalized. However, they often makeinferences about the transnational nature of the offense that is detected andrecorded by the authorities. It is importance to remember that all the crimesconsidered transnational by the United Nations—drug trafficking, humantrafficking, stolen property, counterfeiting, cybercrime and fraud, commercialvices, extortion and racketeering, money laundering, and corruption can also bedomestic crimes. In most countries, the transnational nature of crime isinferred either from the crime itself or from limited data about the offenders,victims, or substance seized. So it is common to find inferences that seeminglydomestic crimes are transnational due to the nationality of the offenders orthe nature of the offense. Drug trafficking is a good example. Drug traffickingis often assumed to be transnational in nature, but drugs are also produced andtrafficked domestically. For example, the 2012 World Drug Report notes thatcannabis production is increasingly widespread, localized, and small scale,making it hard to estimate and detect. The US Drug Enforcement Administrationruns cocaine and heroin drug signature programs whereby toxicologists candetermine the national origin of thedrugs seized, thus determining their transnational nature. But synthetic drugsoften have no signature of national origin, although they maybe part oftransnational crime. Human trafficking is another example of blurredmeasurement of transnationality. By officials questioning a victim of humantrafficking as to his or her citizenship status, we can infer that he or she isa victim of transnational human trafficking (as opposed in interstate orintrastate trafficking). Again, any inference is of course problematic. Aforeign national could be smuggled to the United States or enter the countrylegally and then trafficked interstate once here and thus be a victim of adomestic crime of human trafficking, not a transnational one. Furthermore, detailing the transnational nature of crime—theexact origin of the goods seized, for example—can be very problematic for somecrimes that prima facie, appear to be transnational in nature.
Operationalizing transnational is fundamental for theory developmentin transnational crime research. Much of transnational crime research isdominated by scholars of organized crime, and transnational crime is seldomperpetuated by lone offenders but rather by those working in groups. A centralquestion in organized crime research is how these groups take advantage ofglobalization. Campana analyzes the transnational expansion of a Neapolitancamorra via wiretap data. Challenging common assumptions about the territorialexpansion of mafia type groups, he finds that the group engages in functionaldiversification abroad but forges few international alliances and is still veryclosely tied to the territory of origin. Similarly, Varese, in a case study ofthe Russian mafia in Italy, finds that the migration of an escapee from Russiato Italy creates an outpost that is still heavily dependent on the home base.Thus, the extent to which offending is or becomes transnational is a keyresearch question in the field of transnational (organized) crime and dependson a direct measurement, not an inference, of transnationality.
Apart from the general difficulties of measuring the transnationalnature of crime, many transnational crimes are new to criminal justiceauthorities, and any official recording of such “new” crimes is problematic.Routine crime collection data from the United Nations (the UN-CTS) has nottypically included transnational crime but rather homicide, assaults, sexualviolence, robbery, kidnapping, theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary.However, in the 10th UN-CTS (covering 2005–2006) member states were asked toreport their official statistics on participation in organized criminal groups,human trafficking, and the smuggling of migrants, using the definitions frominternational law. Relatively few countries were able to respond and not allused the definitions from international law at the national level. Forparticipation in organized groups, 36 countries were able to providepolice-generated data from 2006, showing a median rate of 1.4 crimes per100,000 population in 2006. But only 20 of those 36 followed the definition ininternational law. For human trafficking, 52 countries were able to respondwith police data for 2006, showing a median of 2 cases per 100,000 population,and 33 of these 52 countries followed the definition of human trafficking ininternational law. For migrant smuggling, 45 countries were able to provide data,33 of which followed the definition from international law, showing a median of1.4 police recorded offenses per 100,00 population. In addition, a recent 2011 Global Study on Homicide conducted by UNODC made an attempt toestimate the proportion of homicides related to organized crime and gangs. Only 27 countries were able to providethis information, which suggests that this proportion is higher in the Americasthan in Asia and Europe.
If measurement is problematic, so is under-detection by criminaljustice authorities. The United States has criminalized human trafficking andestablished mechanisms and training for detecting and recording it. Farrell,McDevitt, and Fahy, in an analysis of human-trafficking incidents in the UnitedStates, analyzed data from a survey of a national sample of municipal lawenforcement agencies. They reported that less than 10% of these agenciesidentified any human-trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Those agencies thatwere more likely to identify cases of human trafficking were the larger ones,but the two most important predictors of human-trafficking identification bythe police were the perception of the agency leader about the problem at thelocal level, as well as the steps taken to train officers to identify these incidentsand respond to them. Van Dijk offers two more reasons why official data at thenational level may not capture complex or organized transnational crime well:corruption and political interference. Inaddition, lack of coordination and cooperation among police agencies,domestically and internationally, is a factor in the lack of detection oftransnational crime.
An important alternative to official statistics are victimizationsurveys. Within samples of the general population, a proportion of those surveyedwill admit to having experienced (as victims) certain kinds of victimization.These surveys ask behavior specific questions, not legalistic ones, thus makingcomparison across national jurisdictions possible. In that way, they present anadvantage over official statistics. They discern offenses both reported andunreported to the police, another important advantage over official statistics.Explanatory variables can be added to the survey, thus aiding in explaining andpredicting victimization and thus designing crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages of victimization surveys relate to sampling and the surveymethod; some victims may not reveal the truth (for which specialized surveysmay be needed, such as in the case of gender-based violence); homicide cannotbe measured because of the lack of a living victim to be interviewed. TheInternational Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) has been administered in five wavessince 1989.
Conventional victimization surveys are problematic for measuringtransnational crime. Van Dijk, in spite of his lifetime work supporting themethod of the victimization survey around the globe, is one of the authors whohas critiqued victimization surveys for being inattentive, or inappropriate, interms of providing useful data on transnational organized crime. Given that theICVS is undertaken around the globe, in theory its data would offer the bestprospects for inferring about the transnational nature of victimization.However, this is not the case. The ICVS, like many of its national counterpartssuch as the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), queries itsrespondents about conventional, domestic crimes including motor vehicle theft,burglaries, robbery, pickpocketing, assault, and sexual offenses. Itsquestioning is at the individual and household level, whereas manytransnational crimes cause collective harm that is not perceived at thepersonal, local level. And finally, it is unlikely to detect victimization thatoccurs relatively rarely in the population, such as human trafficking forsexual exploitation.
Expanding on van Dijk’s criticism, the first problem withvictimization surveys is that they are constrained to measure a limited numberof crimes, and none of the crimes included in victimization surveys are transnationalin nature. One could argue that even the aforementioned list of domestic crimescould have a transnational component, and that is true. But it is unlikely thata victim, even if queried, would know this. If your automobile was stolen toprovide parts for sale in another country, would you as a victim know this when surveyed? If your homewere burglarized or your wallet stolen, would you know that the offender(s)were part of a transnational criminal organization?
Asecond problem with victimization surveys is that they are based on householdsamples. It is unlikely that certain victims of transnational crime would bepart of the sample of households for a victimization survey. How likely is itthat a victim of human trafficking would appear in the sample, given what weknow about how they are isolated from social life by their traffickers? Andeven if they did appear in the sample, how likely is it that they would revealinformation about their situation? Victimization survey staff would have to receivespecialized training to gather this kind of sensitive information, and foreignlanguage capacities would have to be developed as well.
The third reason that victimization surveys do not routinelycapture much transnational crime is that the nature of transnationaltrafficking in goods (drugs, arms, fraudulent pharmaceuticals, diamonds,animals, and plants) does not provide us with direct, discernible human victimsto question. It is thus important not to criticize victim surveys for somethingthey were not designed to do.
The fourth reason relates to the problem of counting:Transnational crime, because of the movement across borders, is often betterconceptualized as a process than an event. It may indeed involve severalcrimes, and it occurs over time. To illustrate, let us suppose that ahuman-trafficking victim is kidnapped from her home country and taken to atransit country, then transferred to a destination country; drugged or rapedinto submission; deprived of her identity documents and money; and threatenedor forced to commit harmful or illegal acts. Let us suppose that avictimization survey interviewer comes upon this person in arandom-digit-dialed telephone interview in the United States. Now, humantrafficking is not directly queried as a type of victimization in the NCVS, butsexual assault, robbery, theft, and simple and aggravated assault are included.However, because of the counting rules of the National Crime VictimizationSurvey, much of the ordeal of this victim would not be recorded; either itwould fall outside the six-month recall period or only the most seriousvictimization events would be included in the final crime count. Furthermore,the NCVS does not include victimization that occurs outside the United States.
Another alternative to official crime statistics are self-reportsurveys. These are administered to the general population, usually to youngpeople, but the technique has also been used with prison inmates. With generalsamples of young people, many will admit (self-report) various kinds ofantisocial and criminal behavior. This kind of questioning usesbehavior-specific questions, thus maximizing comparability by avoiding theproblems of stigmatizing and complex legal definitions. Both detected and undetectedoffenses are discovered through self-report surveys, thus getting at the “darkfigure” of crime in official statistics. Variables of etiological interest canbe added, as in victimization, to explain or predict offending and thusincrease the benefits of the results in formulating crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages relate again to the typical problems of sampling and surveys. Inaddition, validity can be problematic if offenders are prone to lie orexaggerate and if it is not possible to ask about very serious crime. (Homicidestatistics, thus, are the realm of official statistics [police or coroner].)
The International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD) has beenconducted twice since the early 1990s. But self-report surveys do not typicallycapture transnational crime either. Self-report surveys can and do ask aboutdrug trafficking. But they do not typically delve into the transnational natureof the crime, nor do they ask extensive questions about planning andco-offending. The number of crimes and the number of follow-up questions on thecharacteristics of offenders andcrimes is limited in self-report surveys. And because many low- and midleveltraffickers are shielded from knowing who is part of the largerdrug-trafficking network, the self-report survey method, which is administeredon an individual basis, isn't likely to generate much data on transnationaloffending networks of modus operandi. This method, however, holds some promisein terms of its expansion to measure transnational offending, were it to beused in focused youth and prison samples.
Chapter 3: Measuring and Researching Transnational Crime
Scholars in criminology and criminal justice have long lamentedthe lack of research in international criminal justice and criminology,acknowledged the challenges for conducting good research in these areas, andwelcomed the growth of research in recent years. This chapter examines thespecific problems of researching transnational crime: how to measure andanalyze it. Very little methodological literature is available on the difficultiesof studying transnational crime, and traditional criminological researchtraining pays little attention to the study of transnational crime. Thisinattention to the particularities of international/comparative research isreflected in criminological research methods courses. Future scholars need tobe trained from the very beginning of their research careers to conduct, andmost important, to dare to conductinternational research, including research on transnational crime. This ischallenging to do because at this stage (1) international research is often outof students' knowledge and ability reach; (2) what must be included in such acourse is rarely included in research methods textbooks, and even denigratedtherein; (3) traditional research methods courses ignore the challenges ofresearching in developing countries or conflict-ridden societies'; (4)“hands-on” assignments are hampered by not being present at the research siteoverseas; (5) such additions to the course saturate the already dense curriculumfor methods courses; and (6) criminology students are rarely obliged to learnforeign languages in order to conduct research in foreign countries.
The transnational nature of crime and how to measure itdefy many traditional research methods, as we will see in this chapter. That isdue to the mobility and elusiveness of offenders and victims, innovation in modus operandi, and dangerousness ofthe research subject. Much transnational crime research uses anecdotalevidence—unsystematically gathered or analyzed data, case studies of limitedgeneralizability, or indirect data gathered from expert perceptions. However,new, innovative methods are being developed that are promising avenues forfuture research.
This chapter takes a critical look at the research methods used intransnational crime research, but it has a positive outlook on how new methodsare being developed in this field. Therefore, the chapter first outlines crimemeasurement as developed by conventional criminologists and how it does or doesnot work in providing adequate measures for transnational crime. It thendescribes some of the better composite analyses available for transnationalcrime that rely on triangulating data sources and methods of measurement.Finally, the chapter ends by highlighting recent advances in knowledge in thearea of measurement and analytical methods for transnational crime. Specialattention is devoted to qualitative measurement of transnational crime: Thefield is often fixated on quantitative measurement, but qualitative measuresare also useful in describing the nature and extent of transnational crime. Thechapter ends with an acknowledgment of the political nature of the data andmethods used in transnational crime research.
General Measures of Crime and Their Usefulness for MeasuringTransnational Crime
The purpose of crime measurement is to obtain valid, reliable, andin the case of international crime measurement, comparable crime data. Thisincludes (a) official data (that gathered by government agencies—e.g., police,border patrol and customs, courts, corrections, public health authorities), (b)victimization data (that gathered through surveys of samples of the generalpopulation, inquiring as to their victimization), and (c) self-report data(that gathered through surveys of samples of the general population, inquiringabout their involvement in crime or anti-social behavior). Each data source hasits pros and cons and not all are directly comparable to each other: rather,scholars generally agree that they are complementary. The general rule of thumbis that the closer the data gatherer is to the crime itself (in space andtime), the more valid and reliable the data will be. That is because thecriminal justice system generally acts as a funnel, filtering and sometimesdistorting the input into the criminal justice system at each level. Members ofthe general public may experience a crime, but not all will call the police orsee their case through to sentencing. Members of the general public may also commitcrimes, but not all will be detected, recorded, arrested, charged, arraigned,convicted, and sentenced to prison. At each stage in the criminal justiceprocess, attrition occurs, and at the exit from the criminal justice system,the final crime picture is a selective, and usually biased, sample of theoriginal incidents.
The developments in alternatives to official crime measurement—theadvent of victimization and self-report surveys—are some of the importantcontributions of 20th-century criminology. However, most of these conventionalmethods of measuring the nature and extent of crime quantitatively areproblematic in providing measures of the extent and nature of transnationalcrime. First, they are problematic in the same way as for measuring common,domestic crime comparatively in a cross-national context: Countries havedifferent cultural norms, legal systems, different legal definitions, anddifferent ways of detecting, recording, and counting crime. One could arguethat countries that have ratified the UN Convention on Transnational OrganizedCrime have signed on to a harmonized international definition of transnationalorganized crime: however, thedefinition is not operationalized for social science purposes in the conventionnor has any uniform data-gathering strategy, apart from that used to measuredrug trafficking, been proposed. But beyond these problems of definition andrecording practices, the nature of transnational crime and its relatively newacknowledgment as an area of interest for criminologists (and others) meansthat conventional crime data sources either do not include transnational crimeor, by the nature of the method used, could not.
Data sources for crime are most prevalent in the developed world,and in particular, in parts of the developed world with active criminal justiceacademic and management capacity—where expertise has been developed on how toresearch crime and where government agencies find that “evidence” useful intheir work. Most middle-and low-income countries have very few data sources tochoose from, and official data may be all there is available, since at minimum,police around the world are routinely expected to keep some kind of record oftheir activities in detecting crime. Increasingly, public health officials havebeen called on to aid in providing data related to homicides and assaults; evenif those wounded due to crime do not go to a police station to report theirvictimization, they will often go to the emergency room for medical treatmentwhere the assault can be recorded in public health statistics. However, in thedeveloping world, this is often problematic, especially in rural areas whereaccess to medical facilities can be nonexistent. But what criminologists knowfor sure about official data is that it reflects the gathering agency's workculture and human and technical capabilities, and where crime figures arepublic and politicized, the political pressures to show that crime isincreasing or decreasing. Most important, official data miss all crime notreported or detected, which depends on the seriousness of the crime, trust inthe police, fear of offender reprisals, the accessibility of the police,communication, and the incentive structure to report crime (e.g., insurancecoverage, access to related public services). Thus, the dark (i.e., unreported)figure of crime in official crime data can be substantial and is the majorreason that criminologists in the 20th century developed new measures of crimethat do not depend on the consent or authorization of the State.
Despite the many disadvantages of official crime data, they aremost likely at the present moment to provide some measure of transnationalcrime in countries where these acts are criminalized. However, they often makeinferences about the transnational nature of the offense that is detected andrecorded by the authorities. It is importance to remember that all the crimesconsidered transnational by the United Nations—drug trafficking, humantrafficking, stolen property, counterfeiting, cybercrime and fraud, commercialvices, extortion and racketeering, money laundering, and corruption can also bedomestic crimes. In most countries, the transnational nature of crime isinferred either from the crime itself or from limited data about the offenders,victims, or substance seized. So it is common to find inferences that seeminglydomestic crimes are transnational due to the nationality of the offenders orthe nature of the offense. Drug trafficking is a good example. Drug traffickingis often assumed to be transnational in nature, but drugs are also produced andtrafficked domestically. For example, the 2012 World Drug Report notes thatcannabis production is increasingly widespread, localized, and small scale,making it hard to estimate and detect. The US Drug Enforcement Administrationruns cocaine and heroin drug signature programs whereby toxicologists candetermine the national origin of thedrugs seized, thus determining their transnational nature. But synthetic drugsoften have no signature of national origin, although they maybe part oftransnational crime. Human trafficking is another example of blurredmeasurement of transnationality. By officials questioning a victim of humantrafficking as to his or her citizenship status, we can infer that he or she isa victim of transnational human trafficking (as opposed in interstate orintrastate trafficking). Again, any inference is of course problematic. Aforeign national could be smuggled to the United States or enter the countrylegally and then trafficked interstate once here and thus be a victim of adomestic crime of human trafficking, not a transnational one. Furthermore, detailing the transnational nature of crime—theexact origin of the goods seized, for example—can be very problematic for somecrimes that prima facie, appear to be transnational in nature.
Operationalizing transnational is fundamental for theory developmentin transnational crime research. Much of transnational crime research isdominated by scholars of organized crime, and transnational crime is seldomperpetuated by lone offenders but rather by those working in groups. A centralquestion in organized crime research is how these groups take advantage ofglobalization. Campana analyzes the transnational expansion of a Neapolitancamorra via wiretap data. Challenging common assumptions about the territorialexpansion of mafia type groups, he finds that the group engages in functionaldiversification abroad but forges few international alliances and is still veryclosely tied to the territory of origin. Similarly, Varese, in a case study ofthe Russian mafia in Italy, finds that the migration of an escapee from Russiato Italy creates an outpost that is still heavily dependent on the home base.Thus, the extent to which offending is or becomes transnational is a keyresearch question in the field of transnational (organized) crime and dependson a direct measurement, not an inference, of transnationality.
Apart from the general difficulties of measuring the transnationalnature of crime, many transnational crimes are new to criminal justiceauthorities, and any official recording of such “new” crimes is problematic.Routine crime collection data from the United Nations (the UN-CTS) has nottypically included transnational crime but rather homicide, assaults, sexualviolence, robbery, kidnapping, theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary.However, in the 10th UN-CTS (covering 2005–2006) member states were asked toreport their official statistics on participation in organized criminal groups,human trafficking, and the smuggling of migrants, using the definitions frominternational law. Relatively few countries were able to respond and not allused the definitions from international law at the national level. Forparticipation in organized groups, 36 countries were able to providepolice-generated data from 2006, showing a median rate of 1.4 crimes per100,000 population in 2006. But only 20 of those 36 followed the definition ininternational law. For human trafficking, 52 countries were able to respondwith police data for 2006, showing a median of 2 cases per 100,000 population,and 33 of these 52 countries followed the definition of human trafficking ininternational law. For migrant smuggling, 45 countries were able to provide data,33 of which followed the definition from international law, showing a median of1.4 police recorded offenses per 100,00 population. In addition, a recent 2011 Global Study on Homicide conducted by UNODC made an attempt toestimate the proportion of homicides related to organized crime and gangs. Only 27 countries were able to providethis information, which suggests that this proportion is higher in the Americasthan in Asia and Europe.
If measurement is problematic, so is under-detection by criminaljustice authorities. The United States has criminalized human trafficking andestablished mechanisms and training for detecting and recording it. Farrell,McDevitt, and Fahy, in an analysis of human-trafficking incidents in the UnitedStates, analyzed data from a survey of a national sample of municipal lawenforcement agencies. They reported that less than 10% of these agenciesidentified any human-trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Those agencies thatwere more likely to identify cases of human trafficking were the larger ones,but the two most important predictors of human-trafficking identification bythe police were the perception of the agency leader about the problem at thelocal level, as well as the steps taken to train officers to identify these incidentsand respond to them. Van Dijk offers two more reasons why official data at thenational level may not capture complex or organized transnational crime well:corruption and political interference. Inaddition, lack of coordination and cooperation among police agencies,domestically and internationally, is a factor in the lack of detection oftransnational crime.
An important alternative to official statistics are victimizationsurveys. Within samples of the general population, a proportion of those surveyedwill admit to having experienced (as victims) certain kinds of victimization.These surveys ask behavior specific questions, not legalistic ones, thus makingcomparison across national jurisdictions possible. In that way, they present anadvantage over official statistics. They discern offenses both reported andunreported to the police, another important advantage over official statistics.Explanatory variables can be added to the survey, thus aiding in explaining andpredicting victimization and thus designing crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages of victimization surveys relate to sampling and the surveymethod; some victims may not reveal the truth (for which specialized surveysmay be needed, such as in the case of gender-based violence); homicide cannotbe measured because of the lack of a living victim to be interviewed. TheInternational Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) has been administered in five wavessince 1989.
Conventional victimization surveys are problematic for measuringtransnational crime. Van Dijk, in spite of his lifetime work supporting themethod of the victimization survey around the globe, is one of the authors whohas critiqued victimization surveys for being inattentive, or inappropriate, interms of providing useful data on transnational organized crime. Given that theICVS is undertaken around the globe, in theory its data would offer the bestprospects for inferring about the transnational nature of victimization.However, this is not the case. The ICVS, like many of its national counterpartssuch as the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), queries itsrespondents about conventional, domestic crimes including motor vehicle theft,burglaries, robbery, pickpocketing, assault, and sexual offenses. Itsquestioning is at the individual and household level, whereas manytransnational crimes cause collective harm that is not perceived at thepersonal, local level. And finally, it is unlikely to detect victimization thatoccurs relatively rarely in the population, such as human trafficking forsexual exploitation.
Expanding on van Dijk’s criticism, the first problem withvictimization surveys is that they are constrained to measure a limited numberof crimes, and none of the crimes included in victimization surveys are transnationalin nature. One could argue that even the aforementioned list of domestic crimescould have a transnational component, and that is true. But it is unlikely thata victim, even if queried, would know this. If your automobile was stolen toprovide parts for sale in another country, would you as a victim know this when surveyed? If your homewere burglarized or your wallet stolen, would you know that the offender(s)were part of a transnational criminal organization?
Asecond problem with victimization surveys is that they are based on householdsamples. It is unlikely that certain victims of transnational crime would bepart of the sample of households for a victimization survey. How likely is itthat a victim of human trafficking would appear in the sample, given what weknow about how they are isolated from social life by their traffickers? Andeven if they did appear in the sample, how likely is it that they would revealinformation about their situation? Victimization survey staff would have to receivespecialized training to gather this kind of sensitive information, and foreignlanguage capacities would have to be developed as well.
The third reason that victimization surveys do not routinelycapture much transnational crime is that the nature of transnationaltrafficking in goods (drugs, arms, fraudulent pharmaceuticals, diamonds,animals, and plants) does not provide us with direct, discernible human victimsto question. It is thus important not to criticize victim surveys for somethingthey were not designed to do.
The fourth reason relates to the problem of counting:Transnational crime, because of the movement across borders, is often betterconceptualized as a process than an event. It may indeed involve severalcrimes, and it occurs over time. To illustrate, let us suppose that ahuman-trafficking victim is kidnapped from her home country and taken to atransit country, then transferred to a destination country; drugged or rapedinto submission; deprived of her identity documents and money; and threatenedor forced to commit harmful or illegal acts. Let us suppose that avictimization survey interviewer comes upon this person in arandom-digit-dialed telephone interview in the United States. Now, humantrafficking is not directly queried as a type of victimization in the NCVS, butsexual assault, robbery, theft, and simple and aggravated assault are included.However, because of the counting rules of the National Crime VictimizationSurvey, much of the ordeal of this victim would not be recorded; either itwould fall outside the six-month recall period or only the most seriousvictimization events would be included in the final crime count. Furthermore,the NCVS does not include victimization that occurs outside the United States.
Another alternative to official crime statistics are self-reportsurveys. These are administered to the general population, usually to youngpeople, but the technique has also been used with prison inmates. With generalsamples of young people, many will admit (self-report) various kinds ofantisocial and criminal behavior. This kind of questioning usesbehavior-specific questions, thus maximizing comparability by avoiding theproblems of stigmatizing and complex legal definitions. Both detected and undetectedoffenses are discovered through self-report surveys, thus getting at the “darkfigure” of crime in official statistics. Variables of etiological interest canbe added, as in victimization, to explain or predict offending and thusincrease the benefits of the results in formulating crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages relate again to the typical problems of sampling and surveys. Inaddition, validity can be problematic if offenders are prone to lie orexaggerate and if it is not possible to ask about very serious crime. (Homicidestatistics, thus, are the realm of official statistics [police or coroner].)
The International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD) has beenconducted twice since the early 1990s. But self-report surveys do not typicallycapture transnational crime either. Self-report surveys can and do ask aboutdrug trafficking. But they do not typically delve into the transnational natureof the crime, nor do they ask extensive questions about planning andco-offending. The number of crimes and the number of follow-up questions on thecharacteristics of offenders andcrimes is limited in self-report surveys. And because many low- and midleveltraffickers are shielded from knowing who is part of the largerdrug-trafficking network, the self-report survey method, which is administeredon an individual basis, isn't likely to generate much data on transnationaloffending networks of modus operandi. This method, however, holds some promisein terms of its expansion to measure transnational offending, were it to beused in focused youth and prison samples.
Chapter 3: Measuring and Researching Transnational Crime
Scholars in criminology and criminal justice have long lamentedthe lack of research in international criminal justice and criminology,acknowledged the challenges for conducting good research in these areas, andwelcomed the growth of research in recent years. This chapter examines thespecific problems of researching transnational crime: how to measure andanalyze it. Very little methodological literature is available on the difficultiesof studying transnational crime, and traditional criminological researchtraining pays little attention to the study of transnational crime. Thisinattention to the particularities of international/comparative research isreflected in criminological research methods courses. Future scholars need tobe trained from the very beginning of their research careers to conduct, andmost important, to dare to conductinternational research, including research on transnational crime. This ischallenging to do because at this stage (1) international research is often outof students' knowledge and ability reach; (2) what must be included in such acourse is rarely included in research methods textbooks, and even denigratedtherein; (3) traditional research methods courses ignore the challenges ofresearching in developing countries or conflict-ridden societies'; (4)“hands-on” assignments are hampered by not being present at the research siteoverseas; (5) such additions to the course saturate the already dense curriculumfor methods courses; and (6) criminology students are rarely obliged to learnforeign languages in order to conduct research in foreign countries.
The transnational nature of crime and how to measure itdefy many traditional research methods, as we will see in this chapter. That isdue to the mobility and elusiveness of offenders and victims, innovation in modus operandi, and dangerousness ofthe research subject. Much transnational crime research uses anecdotalevidence—unsystematically gathered or analyzed data, case studies of limitedgeneralizability, or indirect data gathered from expert perceptions. However,new, innovative methods are being developed that are promising avenues forfuture research.
This chapter takes a critical look at the research methods used intransnational crime research, but it has a positive outlook on how new methodsare being developed in this field. Therefore, the chapter first outlines crimemeasurement as developed by conventional criminologists and how it does or doesnot work in providing adequate measures for transnational crime. It thendescribes some of the better composite analyses available for transnationalcrime that rely on triangulating data sources and methods of measurement.Finally, the chapter ends by highlighting recent advances in knowledge in thearea of measurement and analytical methods for transnational crime. Specialattention is devoted to qualitative measurement of transnational crime: Thefield is often fixated on quantitative measurement, but qualitative measuresare also useful in describing the nature and extent of transnational crime. Thechapter ends with an acknowledgment of the political nature of the data andmethods used in transnational crime research.
General Measures of Crime and Their Usefulness for MeasuringTransnational Crime
The purpose of crime measurement is to obtain valid, reliable, andin the case of international crime measurement, comparable crime data. Thisincludes (a) official data (that gathered by government agencies—e.g., police,border patrol and customs, courts, corrections, public health authorities), (b)victimization data (that gathered through surveys of samples of the generalpopulation, inquiring as to their victimization), and (c) self-report data(that gathered through surveys of samples of the general population, inquiringabout their involvement in crime or anti-social behavior). Each data source hasits pros and cons and not all are directly comparable to each other: rather,scholars generally agree that they are complementary. The general rule of thumbis that the closer the data gatherer is to the crime itself (in space andtime), the more valid and reliable the data will be. That is because thecriminal justice system generally acts as a funnel, filtering and sometimesdistorting the input into the criminal justice system at each level. Members ofthe general public may experience a crime, but not all will call the police orsee their case through to sentencing. Members of the general public may also commitcrimes, but not all will be detected, recorded, arrested, charged, arraigned,convicted, and sentenced to prison. At each stage in the criminal justiceprocess, attrition occurs, and at the exit from the criminal justice system,the final crime picture is a selective, and usually biased, sample of theoriginal incidents.
The developments in alternatives to official crime measurement—theadvent of victimization and self-report surveys—are some of the importantcontributions of 20th-century criminology. However, most of these conventionalmethods of measuring the nature and extent of crime quantitatively areproblematic in providing measures of the extent and nature of transnationalcrime. First, they are problematic in the same way as for measuring common,domestic crime comparatively in a cross-national context: Countries havedifferent cultural norms, legal systems, different legal definitions, anddifferent ways of detecting, recording, and counting crime. One could arguethat countries that have ratified the UN Convention on Transnational OrganizedCrime have signed on to a harmonized international definition of transnationalorganized crime: however, thedefinition is not operationalized for social science purposes in the conventionnor has any uniform data-gathering strategy, apart from that used to measuredrug trafficking, been proposed. But beyond these problems of definition andrecording practices, the nature of transnational crime and its relatively newacknowledgment as an area of interest for criminologists (and others) meansthat conventional crime data sources either do not include transnational crimeor, by the nature of the method used, could not.
Data sources for crime are most prevalent in the developed world,and in particular, in parts of the developed world with active criminal justiceacademic and management capacity—where expertise has been developed on how toresearch crime and where government agencies find that “evidence” useful intheir work. Most middle-and low-income countries have very few data sources tochoose from, and official data may be all there is available, since at minimum,police around the world are routinely expected to keep some kind of record oftheir activities in detecting crime. Increasingly, public health officials havebeen called on to aid in providing data related to homicides and assaults; evenif those wounded due to crime do not go to a police station to report theirvictimization, they will often go to the emergency room for medical treatmentwhere the assault can be recorded in public health statistics. However, in thedeveloping world, this is often problematic, especially in rural areas whereaccess to medical facilities can be nonexistent. But what criminologists knowfor sure about official data is that it reflects the gathering agency's workculture and human and technical capabilities, and where crime figures arepublic and politicized, the political pressures to show that crime isincreasing or decreasing. Most important, official data miss all crime notreported or detected, which depends on the seriousness of the crime, trust inthe police, fear of offender reprisals, the accessibility of the police,communication, and the incentive structure to report crime (e.g., insurancecoverage, access to related public services). Thus, the dark (i.e., unreported)figure of crime in official crime data can be substantial and is the majorreason that criminologists in the 20th century developed new measures of crimethat do not depend on the consent or authorization of the State.
Despite the many disadvantages of official crime data, they aremost likely at the present moment to provide some measure of transnationalcrime in countries where these acts are criminalized. However, they often makeinferences about the transnational nature of the offense that is detected andrecorded by the authorities. It is importance to remember that all the crimesconsidered transnational by the United Nations—drug trafficking, humantrafficking, stolen property, counterfeiting, cybercrime and fraud, commercialvices, extortion and racketeering, money laundering, and corruption can also bedomestic crimes. In most countries, the transnational nature of crime isinferred either from the crime itself or from limited data about the offenders,victims, or substance seized. So it is common to find inferences that seeminglydomestic crimes are transnational due to the nationality of the offenders orthe nature of the offense. Drug trafficking is a good example. Drug traffickingis often assumed to be transnational in nature, but drugs are also produced andtrafficked domestically. For example, the 2012 World Drug Report notes thatcannabis production is increasingly widespread, localized, and small scale,making it hard to estimate and detect. The US Drug Enforcement Administrationruns cocaine and heroin drug signature programs whereby toxicologists candetermine the national origin of thedrugs seized, thus determining their transnational nature. But synthetic drugsoften have no signature of national origin, although they maybe part oftransnational crime. Human trafficking is another example of blurredmeasurement of transnationality. By officials questioning a victim of humantrafficking as to his or her citizenship status, we can infer that he or she isa victim of transnational human trafficking (as opposed in interstate orintrastate trafficking). Again, any inference is of course problematic. Aforeign national could be smuggled to the United States or enter the countrylegally and then trafficked interstate once here and thus be a victim of adomestic crime of human trafficking, not a transnational one. Furthermore, detailing the transnational nature of crime—theexact origin of the goods seized, for example—can be very problematic for somecrimes that prima facie, appear to be transnational in nature.
Operationalizing transnational is fundamental for theory developmentin transnational crime research. Much of transnational crime research isdominated by scholars of organized crime, and transnational crime is seldomperpetuated by lone offenders but rather by those working in groups. A centralquestion in organized crime research is how these groups take advantage ofglobalization. Campana analyzes the transnational expansion of a Neapolitancamorra via wiretap data. Challenging common assumptions about the territorialexpansion of mafia type groups, he finds that the group engages in functionaldiversification abroad but forges few international alliances and is still veryclosely tied to the territory of origin. Similarly, Varese, in a case study ofthe Russian mafia in Italy, finds that the migration of an escapee from Russiato Italy creates an outpost that is still heavily dependent on the home base.Thus, the extent to which offending is or becomes transnational is a keyresearch question in the field of transnational (organized) crime and dependson a direct measurement, not an inference, of transnationality.
Apart from the general difficulties of measuring the transnationalnature of crime, many transnational crimes are new to criminal justiceauthorities, and any official recording of such “new” crimes is problematic.Routine crime collection data from the United Nations (the UN-CTS) has nottypically included transnational crime but rather homicide, assaults, sexualviolence, robbery, kidnapping, theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary.However, in the 10th UN-CTS (covering 2005–2006) member states were asked toreport their official statistics on participation in organized criminal groups,human trafficking, and the smuggling of migrants, using the definitions frominternational law. Relatively few countries were able to respond and not allused the definitions from international law at the national level. Forparticipation in organized groups, 36 countries were able to providepolice-generated data from 2006, showing a median rate of 1.4 crimes per100,000 population in 2006. But only 20 of those 36 followed the definition ininternational law. For human trafficking, 52 countries were able to respondwith police data for 2006, showing a median of 2 cases per 100,000 population,and 33 of these 52 countries followed the definition of human trafficking ininternational law. For migrant smuggling, 45 countries were able to provide data,33 of which followed the definition from international law, showing a median of1.4 police recorded offenses per 100,00 population. In addition, a recent 2011 Global Study on Homicide conducted by UNODC made an attempt toestimate the proportion of homicides related to organized crime and gangs. Only 27 countries were able to providethis information, which suggests that this proportion is higher in the Americasthan in Asia and Europe.
If measurement is problematic, so is under-detection by criminaljustice authorities. The United States has criminalized human trafficking andestablished mechanisms and training for detecting and recording it. Farrell,McDevitt, and Fahy, in an analysis of human-trafficking incidents in the UnitedStates, analyzed data from a survey of a national sample of municipal lawenforcement agencies. They reported that less than 10% of these agenciesidentified any human-trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Those agencies thatwere more likely to identify cases of human trafficking were the larger ones,but the two most important predictors of human-trafficking identification bythe police were the perception of the agency leader about the problem at thelocal level, as well as the steps taken to train officers to identify these incidentsand respond to them. Van Dijk offers two more reasons why official data at thenational level may not capture complex or organized transnational crime well:corruption and political interference. Inaddition, lack of coordination and cooperation among police agencies,domestically and internationally, is a factor in the lack of detection oftransnational crime.
An important alternative to official statistics are victimizationsurveys. Within samples of the general population, a proportion of those surveyedwill admit to having experienced (as victims) certain kinds of victimization.These surveys ask behavior specific questions, not legalistic ones, thus makingcomparison across national jurisdictions possible. In that way, they present anadvantage over official statistics. They discern offenses both reported andunreported to the police, another important advantage over official statistics.Explanatory variables can be added to the survey, thus aiding in explaining andpredicting victimization and thus designing crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages of victimization surveys relate to sampling and the surveymethod; some victims may not reveal the truth (for which specialized surveysmay be needed, such as in the case of gender-based violence); homicide cannotbe measured because of the lack of a living victim to be interviewed. TheInternational Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) has been administered in five wavessince 1989.
Conventional victimization surveys are problematic for measuringtransnational crime. Van Dijk, in spite of his lifetime work supporting themethod of the victimization survey around the globe, is one of the authors whohas critiqued victimization surveys for being inattentive, or inappropriate, interms of providing useful data on transnational organized crime. Given that theICVS is undertaken around the globe, in theory its data would offer the bestprospects for inferring about the transnational nature of victimization.However, this is not the case. The ICVS, like many of its national counterpartssuch as the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), queries itsrespondents about conventional, domestic crimes including motor vehicle theft,burglaries, robbery, pickpocketing, assault, and sexual offenses. Itsquestioning is at the individual and household level, whereas manytransnational crimes cause collective harm that is not perceived at thepersonal, local level. And finally, it is unlikely to detect victimization thatoccurs relatively rarely in the population, such as human trafficking forsexual exploitation.
Expanding on van Dijk’s criticism, the first problem withvictimization surveys is that they are constrained to measure a limited numberof crimes, and none of the crimes included in victimization surveys are transnationalin nature. One could argue that even the aforementioned list of domestic crimescould have a transnational component, and that is true. But it is unlikely thata victim, even if queried, would know this. If your automobile was stolen toprovide parts for sale in another country, would you as a victim know this when surveyed? If your homewere burglarized or your wallet stolen, would you know that the offender(s)were part of a transnational criminal organization?
Asecond problem with victimization surveys is that they are based on householdsamples. It is unlikely that certain victims of transnational crime would bepart of the sample of households for a victimization survey. How likely is itthat a victim of human trafficking would appear in the sample, given what weknow about how they are isolated from social life by their traffickers? Andeven if they did appear in the sample, how likely is it that they would revealinformation about their situation? Victimization survey staff would have to receivespecialized training to gather this kind of sensitive information, and foreignlanguage capacities would have to be developed as well.
The third reason that victimization surveys do not routinelycapture much transnational crime is that the nature of transnationaltrafficking in goods (drugs, arms, fraudulent pharmaceuticals, diamonds,animals, and plants) does not provide us with direct, discernible human victimsto question. It is thus important not to criticize victim surveys for somethingthey were not designed to do.
The fourth reason relates to the problem of counting:Transnational crime, because of the movement across borders, is often betterconceptualized as a process than an event. It may indeed involve severalcrimes, and it occurs over time. To illustrate, let us suppose that ahuman-trafficking victim is kidnapped from her home country and taken to atransit country, then transferred to a destination country; drugged or rapedinto submission; deprived of her identity documents and money; and threatenedor forced to commit harmful or illegal acts. Let us suppose that avictimization survey interviewer comes upon this person in arandom-digit-dialed telephone interview in the United States. Now, humantrafficking is not directly queried as a type of victimization in the NCVS, butsexual assault, robbery, theft, and simple and aggravated assault are included.However, because of the counting rules of the National Crime VictimizationSurvey, much of the ordeal of this victim would not be recorded; either itwould fall outside the six-month recall period or only the most seriousvictimization events would be included in the final crime count. Furthermore,the NCVS does not include victimization that occurs outside the United States.
Another alternative to official crime statistics are self-reportsurveys. These are administered to the general population, usually to youngpeople, but the technique has also been used with prison inmates. With generalsamples of young people, many will admit (self-report) various kinds ofantisocial and criminal behavior. This kind of questioning usesbehavior-specific questions, thus maximizing comparability by avoiding theproblems of stigmatizing and complex legal definitions. Both detected and undetectedoffenses are discovered through self-report surveys, thus getting at the “darkfigure” of crime in official statistics. Variables of etiological interest canbe added, as in victimization, to explain or predict offending and thusincrease the benefits of the results in formulating crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages relate again to the typical problems of sampling and surveys. Inaddition, validity can be problematic if offenders are prone to lie orexaggerate and if it is not possible to ask about very serious crime. (Homicidestatistics, thus, are the realm of official statistics [police or coroner].)
The International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD) has beenconducted twice since the early 1990s. But self-report surveys do not typicallycapture transnational crime either. Self-report surveys can and do ask aboutdrug trafficking. But they do not typically delve into the transnational natureof the crime, nor do they ask extensive questions about planning andco-offending. The number of crimes and the number of follow-up questions on thecharacteristics of offenders andcrimes is limited in self-report surveys. And because many low- and midleveltraffickers are shielded from knowing who is part of the largerdrug-trafficking network, the self-report survey method, which is administeredon an individual basis, isn't likely to generate much data on transnationaloffending networks of modus operandi. This method, however, holds some promisein terms of its expansion to measure transnational offending, were it to beused in focused youth and prison samples.
Chapter 3: Measuring and Researching Transnational Crime
Scholars in criminology and criminal justice have long lamentedthe lack of research in international criminal justice and criminology,acknowledged the challenges for conducting good research in these areas, andwelcomed the growth of research in recent years. This chapter examines thespecific problems of researching transnational crime: how to measure andanalyze it. Very little methodological literature is available on the difficultiesof studying transnational crime, and traditional criminological researchtraining pays little attention to the study of transnational crime. Thisinattention to the particularities of international/comparative research isreflected in criminological research methods courses. Future scholars need tobe trained from the very beginning of their research careers to conduct, andmost important, to dare to conductinternational research, including research on transnational crime. This ischallenging to do because at this stage (1) international research is often outof students' knowledge and ability reach; (2) what must be included in such acourse is rarely included in research methods textbooks, and even denigratedtherein; (3) traditional research methods courses ignore the challenges ofresearching in developing countries or conflict-ridden societies'; (4)“hands-on” assignments are hampered by not being present at the research siteoverseas; (5) such additions to the course saturate the already dense curriculumfor methods courses; and (6) criminology students are rarely obliged to learnforeign languages in order to conduct research in foreign countries.
The transnational nature of crime and how to measure itdefy many traditional research methods, as we will see in this chapter. That isdue to the mobility and elusiveness of offenders and victims, innovation in modus operandi, and dangerousness ofthe research subject. Much transnational crime research uses anecdotalevidence—unsystematically gathered or analyzed data, case studies of limitedgeneralizability, or indirect data gathered from expert perceptions. However,new, innovative methods are being developed that are promising avenues forfuture research.
This chapter takes a critical look at the research methods used intransnational crime research, but it has a positive outlook on how new methodsare being developed in this field. Therefore, the chapter first outlines crimemeasurement as developed by conventional criminologists and how it does or doesnot work in providing adequate measures for transnational crime. It thendescribes some of the better composite analyses available for transnationalcrime that rely on triangulating data sources and methods of measurement.Finally, the chapter ends by highlighting recent advances in knowledge in thearea of measurement and analytical methods for transnational crime. Specialattention is devoted to qualitative measurement of transnational crime: Thefield is often fixated on quantitative measurement, but qualitative measuresare also useful in describing the nature and extent of transnational crime. Thechapter ends with an acknowledgment of the political nature of the data andmethods used in transnational crime research.
General Measures of Crime and Their Usefulness for MeasuringTransnational Crime
The purpose of crime measurement is to obtain valid, reliable, andin the case of international crime measurement, comparable crime data. Thisincludes (a) official data (that gathered by government agencies—e.g., police,border patrol and customs, courts, corrections, public health authorities), (b)victimization data (that gathered through surveys of samples of the generalpopulation, inquiring as to their victimization), and (c) self-report data(that gathered through surveys of samples of the general population, inquiringabout their involvement in crime or anti-social behavior). Each data source hasits pros and cons and not all are directly comparable to each other: rather,scholars generally agree that they are complementary. The general rule of thumbis that the closer the data gatherer is to the crime itself (in space andtime), the more valid and reliable the data will be. That is because thecriminal justice system generally acts as a funnel, filtering and sometimesdistorting the input into the criminal justice system at each level. Members ofthe general public may experience a crime, but not all will call the police orsee their case through to sentencing. Members of the general public may also commitcrimes, but not all will be detected, recorded, arrested, charged, arraigned,convicted, and sentenced to prison. At each stage in the criminal justiceprocess, attrition occurs, and at the exit from the criminal justice system,the final crime picture is a selective, and usually biased, sample of theoriginal incidents.
The developments in alternatives to official crime measurement—theadvent of victimization and self-report surveys—are some of the importantcontributions of 20th-century criminology. However, most of these conventionalmethods of measuring the nature and extent of crime quantitatively areproblematic in providing measures of the extent and nature of transnationalcrime. First, they are problematic in the same way as for measuring common,domestic crime comparatively in a cross-national context: Countries havedifferent cultural norms, legal systems, different legal definitions, anddifferent ways of detecting, recording, and counting crime. One could arguethat countries that have ratified the UN Convention on Transnational OrganizedCrime have signed on to a harmonized international definition of transnationalorganized crime: however, thedefinition is not operationalized for social science purposes in the conventionnor has any uniform data-gathering strategy, apart from that used to measuredrug trafficking, been proposed. But beyond these problems of definition andrecording practices, the nature of transnational crime and its relatively newacknowledgment as an area of interest for criminologists (and others) meansthat conventional crime data sources either do not include transnational crimeor, by the nature of the method used, could not.
Data sources for crime are most prevalent in the developed world,and in particular, in parts of the developed world with active criminal justiceacademic and management capacity—where expertise has been developed on how toresearch crime and where government agencies find that “evidence” useful intheir work. Most middle-and low-income countries have very few data sources tochoose from, and official data may be all there is available, since at minimum,police around the world are routinely expected to keep some kind of record oftheir activities in detecting crime. Increasingly, public health officials havebeen called on to aid in providing data related to homicides and assaults; evenif those wounded due to crime do not go to a police station to report theirvictimization, they will often go to the emergency room for medical treatmentwhere the assault can be recorded in public health statistics. However, in thedeveloping world, this is often problematic, especially in rural areas whereaccess to medical facilities can be nonexistent. But what criminologists knowfor sure about official data is that it reflects the gathering agency's workculture and human and technical capabilities, and where crime figures arepublic and politicized, the political pressures to show that crime isincreasing or decreasing. Most important, official data miss all crime notreported or detected, which depends on the seriousness of the crime, trust inthe police, fear of offender reprisals, the accessibility of the police,communication, and the incentive structure to report crime (e.g., insurancecoverage, access to related public services). Thus, the dark (i.e., unreported)figure of crime in official crime data can be substantial and is the majorreason that criminologists in the 20th century developed new measures of crimethat do not depend on the consent or authorization of the State.
Despite the many disadvantages of official crime data, they aremost likely at the present moment to provide some measure of transnationalcrime in countries where these acts are criminalized. However, they often makeinferences about the transnational nature of the offense that is detected andrecorded by the authorities. It is importance to remember that all the crimesconsidered transnational by the United Nations—drug trafficking, humantrafficking, stolen property, counterfeiting, cybercrime and fraud, commercialvices, extortion and racketeering, money laundering, and corruption can also bedomestic crimes. In most countries, the transnational nature of crime isinferred either from the crime itself or from limited data about the offenders,victims, or substance seized. So it is common to find inferences that seeminglydomestic crimes are transnational due to the nationality of the offenders orthe nature of the offense. Drug trafficking is a good example. Drug traffickingis often assumed to be transnational in nature, but drugs are also produced andtrafficked domestically. For example, the 2012 World Drug Report notes thatcannabis production is increasingly widespread, localized, and small scale,making it hard to estimate and detect. The US Drug Enforcement Administrationruns cocaine and heroin drug signature programs whereby toxicologists candetermine the national origin of thedrugs seized, thus determining their transnational nature. But synthetic drugsoften have no signature of national origin, although they maybe part oftransnational crime. Human trafficking is another example of blurredmeasurement of transnationality. By officials questioning a victim of humantrafficking as to his or her citizenship status, we can infer that he or she isa victim of transnational human trafficking (as opposed in interstate orintrastate trafficking). Again, any inference is of course problematic. Aforeign national could be smuggled to the United States or enter the countrylegally and then trafficked interstate once here and thus be a victim of adomestic crime of human trafficking, not a transnational one. Furthermore, detailing the transnational nature of crime—theexact origin of the goods seized, for example—can be very problematic for somecrimes that prima facie, appear to be transnational in nature.
Operationalizing transnational is fundamental for theory developmentin transnational crime research. Much of transnational crime research isdominated by scholars of organized crime, and transnational crime is seldomperpetuated by lone offenders but rather by those working in groups. A centralquestion in organized crime research is how these groups take advantage ofglobalization. Campana analyzes the transnational expansion of a Neapolitancamorra via wiretap data. Challenging common assumptions about the territorialexpansion of mafia type groups, he finds that the group engages in functionaldiversification abroad but forges few international alliances and is still veryclosely tied to the territory of origin. Similarly, Varese, in a case study ofthe Russian mafia in Italy, finds that the migration of an escapee from Russiato Italy creates an outpost that is still heavily dependent on the home base.Thus, the extent to which offending is or becomes transnational is a keyresearch question in the field of transnational (organized) crime and dependson a direct measurement, not an inference, of transnationality.
Apart from the general difficulties of measuring the transnationalnature of crime, many transnational crimes are new to criminal justiceauthorities, and any official recording of such “new” crimes is problematic.Routine crime collection data from the United Nations (the UN-CTS) has nottypically included transnational crime but rather homicide, assaults, sexualviolence, robbery, kidnapping, theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary.However, in the 10th UN-CTS (covering 2005–2006) member states were asked toreport their official statistics on participation in organized criminal groups,human trafficking, and the smuggling of migrants, using the definitions frominternational law. Relatively few countries were able to respond and not allused the definitions from international law at the national level. Forparticipation in organized groups, 36 countries were able to providepolice-generated data from 2006, showing a median rate of 1.4 crimes per100,000 population in 2006. But only 20 of those 36 followed the definition ininternational law. For human trafficking, 52 countries were able to respondwith police data for 2006, showing a median of 2 cases per 100,000 population,and 33 of these 52 countries followed the definition of human trafficking ininternational law. For migrant smuggling, 45 countries were able to provide data,33 of which followed the definition from international law, showing a median of1.4 police recorded offenses per 100,00 population. In addition, a recent 2011 Global Study on Homicide conducted by UNODC made an attempt toestimate the proportion of homicides related to organized crime and gangs. Only 27 countries were able to providethis information, which suggests that this proportion is higher in the Americasthan in Asia and Europe.
If measurement is problematic, so is under-detection by criminaljustice authorities. The United States has criminalized human trafficking andestablished mechanisms and training for detecting and recording it. Farrell,McDevitt, and Fahy, in an analysis of human-trafficking incidents in the UnitedStates, analyzed data from a survey of a national sample of municipal lawenforcement agencies. They reported that less than 10% of these agenciesidentified any human-trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Those agencies thatwere more likely to identify cases of human trafficking were the larger ones,but the two most important predictors of human-trafficking identification bythe police were the perception of the agency leader about the problem at thelocal level, as well as the steps taken to train officers to identify these incidentsand respond to them. Van Dijk offers two more reasons why official data at thenational level may not capture complex or organized transnational crime well:corruption and political interference. Inaddition, lack of coordination and cooperation among police agencies,domestically and internationally, is a factor in the lack of detection oftransnational crime.
An important alternative to official statistics are victimizationsurveys. Within samples of the general population, a proportion of those surveyedwill admit to having experienced (as victims) certain kinds of victimization.These surveys ask behavior specific questions, not legalistic ones, thus makingcomparison across national jurisdictions possible. In that way, they present anadvantage over official statistics. They discern offenses both reported andunreported to the police, another important advantage over official statistics.Explanatory variables can be added to the survey, thus aiding in explaining andpredicting victimization and thus designing crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages of victimization surveys relate to sampling and the surveymethod; some victims may not reveal the truth (for which specialized surveysmay be needed, such as in the case of gender-based violence); homicide cannotbe measured because of the lack of a living victim to be interviewed. TheInternational Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) has been administered in five wavessince 1989.
Conventional victimization surveys are problematic for measuringtransnational crime. Van Dijk, in spite of his lifetime work supporting themethod of the victimization survey around the globe, is one of the authors whohas critiqued victimization surveys for being inattentive, or inappropriate, interms of providing useful data on transnational organized crime. Given that theICVS is undertaken around the globe, in theory its data would offer the bestprospects for inferring about the transnational nature of victimization.However, this is not the case. The ICVS, like many of its national counterpartssuch as the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), queries itsrespondents about conventional, domestic crimes including motor vehicle theft,burglaries, robbery, pickpocketing, assault, and sexual offenses. Itsquestioning is at the individual and household level, whereas manytransnational crimes cause collective harm that is not perceived at thepersonal, local level. And finally, it is unlikely to detect victimization thatoccurs relatively rarely in the population, such as human trafficking forsexual exploitation.
Expanding on van Dijk’s criticism, the first problem withvictimization surveys is that they are constrained to measure a limited numberof crimes, and none of the crimes included in victimization surveys are transnationalin nature. One could argue that even the aforementioned list of domestic crimescould have a transnational component, and that is true. But it is unlikely thata victim, even if queried, would know this. If your automobile was stolen toprovide parts for sale in another country, would you as a victim know this when surveyed? If your homewere burglarized or your wallet stolen, would you know that the offender(s)were part of a transnational criminal organization?
Asecond problem with victimization surveys is that they are based on householdsamples. It is unlikely that certain victims of transnational crime would bepart of the sample of households for a victimization survey. How likely is itthat a victim of human trafficking would appear in the sample, given what weknow about how they are isolated from social life by their traffickers? Andeven if they did appear in the sample, how likely is it that they would revealinformation about their situation? Victimization survey staff would have to receivespecialized training to gather this kind of sensitive information, and foreignlanguage capacities would have to be developed as well.
The third reason that victimization surveys do not routinelycapture much transnational crime is that the nature of transnationaltrafficking in goods (drugs, arms, fraudulent pharmaceuticals, diamonds,animals, and plants) does not provide us with direct, discernible human victimsto question. It is thus important not to criticize victim surveys for somethingthey were not designed to do.
The fourth reason relates to the problem of counting:Transnational crime, because of the movement across borders, is often betterconceptualized as a process than an event. It may indeed involve severalcrimes, and it occurs over time. To illustrate, let us suppose that ahuman-trafficking victim is kidnapped from her home country and taken to atransit country, then transferred to a destination country; drugged or rapedinto submission; deprived of her identity documents and money; and threatenedor forced to commit harmful or illegal acts. Let us suppose that avictimization survey interviewer comes upon this person in arandom-digit-dialed telephone interview in the United States. Now, humantrafficking is not directly queried as a type of victimization in the NCVS, butsexual assault, robbery, theft, and simple and aggravated assault are included.However, because of the counting rules of the National Crime VictimizationSurvey, much of the ordeal of this victim would not be recorded; either itwould fall outside the six-month recall period or only the most seriousvictimization events would be included in the final crime count. Furthermore,the NCVS does not include victimization that occurs outside the United States.
Another alternative to official crime statistics are self-reportsurveys. These are administered to the general population, usually to youngpeople, but the technique has also been used with prison inmates. With generalsamples of young people, many will admit (self-report) various kinds ofantisocial and criminal behavior. This kind of questioning usesbehavior-specific questions, thus maximizing comparability by avoiding theproblems of stigmatizing and complex legal definitions. Both detected and undetectedoffenses are discovered through self-report surveys, thus getting at the “darkfigure” of crime in official statistics. Variables of etiological interest canbe added, as in victimization, to explain or predict offending and thusincrease the benefits of the results in formulating crime prevention plans. Thedisadvantages relate again to the typical problems of sampling and surveys. Inaddition, validity can be problematic if offenders are prone to lie orexaggerate and if it is not possible to ask about very serious crime. (Homicidestatistics, thus, are the realm of official statistics [police or coroner].)
The International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD) has beenconducted twice since the early 1990s. But self-report surveys do not typicallycapture transnational crime either. Self-report surveys can and do ask aboutdrug trafficking. But they do not typically delve into the transnational natureof the crime, nor do they ask extensive questions about planning andco-offending. The number of crimes and the number of follow-up questions on thecharacteristics of offenders andcrimes is limited in self-report surveys. And because many low- and midleveltraffickers are shielded from knowing who is part of the largerdrug-trafficking network, the self-report survey method, which is administeredon an individual basis, isn't likely to generate much data on transnationaloffending networks of modus operandi. This method, however, holds some promisein terms of its expansion to measure transnational offending, were it to beused in focused youth and prison samples.