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Given that there is no worldwide data source on all transnationalcrimes, one can turn to regional or crime-specific analyses of transnationalcrime. At these more focused levels, good examples exist of methods that aredetailed and crime specific or analyses that are focused on a smallgeographical area. These examples exhibit triangulation—a methodologicaltechnique that increases reliability and validity of findings wherebyresearchers use more than one source of data or analytical tool. Somerepresentative research examples will be highlighted here.

Drug Trafficking

The data sources and analysis available for drug trafficking areperhaps the most readily available and sophisticated of all the data sourcesfor transnational crime. This is related to the relatively long-standing globalpattern of drug prohibition and the widespread ratification of UN antinarcoticsconventions, in addition to the consequent attention paid to routine datagathering in the area of global drug trafficking. In 1998, the General Assemblygave the UNODC the mandate to publish comprehensive and balanced informationabout the world drug problem. Thus, the World Drug Report has been publishedannually since 1999.

The World Drug Report triangulates data on drug trafficking from avariety of different sources in order to give global trends on the supply andtransit of, demand for and consequences of illicit drugs. These include reportsfrom member states; drug seizure data; drug origin and purity data, such as theUS heroin and cocaine signature programs; INTERPOL, EUROPOL, the EuropeanMonitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and World CustomsOrganization data, OAS, organizations of drug law enforcement agencies (HONLEA,HONLAF, HONLAC, HONLAP), and UNODC's own illicit crop monitoring system; anddrug use and abuse surveys. UNODC warns that data challenges exist in terms ofprices and purity of drugs, seizures and trafficking patterns, regional gaps ingeneral for Asia and Africa, and the illicit production of cannabis and ATS insome regions. But even with these caveats, the World Drug Report represents oneof the best examples of attempts to gather and triangulate data ontransnational crime.

The triangulation of data sources allows the World Drug Report toidentify trends in drug supply over time and space. The 2012 World Drug Reportnotes that trends regarding the use, production, and health consequences ofillicit drugs has remained stable from 2005 to 2010, except that Afghanistanopium poppy has returned to its 2009 level after being affected by disease andcrop failure in 2009. Large amounts of heroin are trafficked via the Balkan route,from Afghanistan through Southeastern Europe to Central and Western Europe, butalthough seizures have decreased along this route in 2010, they have increasedin the coastal markets of Africa and in Southeast Asia. Cocaine production hasdeclined in Colombia but increased in Bolivia and Peru. The major markets forcocaine are in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. The World Drug Report notes growingevidence that drug-trafficking organizations involved in smugglingamphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) are exploiting West Africa in a similar wayto cocaine traffickers. Cannabis consumption is stable, but production isincreasingly widespread.

In addition, the data on drug demand allows the World Drug Reportto identify which drugs are in most demand and where. The most commonly useddrugs around the world are cannabis and ATS, excluding ecstasy. Drug use isstabilizing in the developed world and increasing in the developing world,precisely where demographics exhibit a younger population and rapidurbanization—two features of the drug user population. Polydrug use is commonas well as the manufacture of drugs, sometimes a mixture of legal and illegaldrugs, that defy detection and criminalization. The nonmedical use ofprescription drugs is also a growing problem. In general, the World Drug Reportadmits that illicit drug traffickers are creative, adaptable, and flexible inexploring new drugs, markets, and modus operandi for trafficking.

A good example of multimethod research in a focused, country-specificstudy of drug production and trafficking is Buddenberg and Byrd's 2010compilation on the drug industry in Afghanistan. The report is based on UNODC(2010) surveys of opium poppy cultivation and price data; rural householdsurvey data; and interviews with rural opium farmers and wage laborers, hawala dealers, small andmidlevel traders, and law enforcement members. A number of methodologicalstrategies to ensure that qualitative fieldwork resulted in valid and reliabledata were put in place, such as interviewer training and guidance, a variedsample of respondents, an iterative approach to data collection, cross-checkingand corroboration, and strict confidentiality and anonymity of interviewsources. Macroeconomic and econometric analyses were used for quantitativedata, and the study was completed by diagrams and case studies. The result ofthis multimethod study is a series of consistent findings about the importanceof the opium economy to the overall economy, politics, and society of Afghanistan;the diversity and flexibility of the opium market; and the positive andnegative consequences of the opium economy as well as many unintendedconsequences of counternarcotics policies and programs.

Human Trafficking

The data sources for human trafficking are more limited than fordrug trafficking, if only because this phenomenon benefits from fairly recentattention by the world community. Thus, the methods to detect, quantify, anddescribe human trafficking are still in their infancy. Furthermore, despitemuch media attention, human trafficking does not benefit from the widespreadcriminalization that drug-trafficking exhibits worldwide. Finally, unlikeillicit drugs, which are objects that can be fairly clearly recognized oncefound (and analyzed by toxicologists), human-trafficking victims are not soreadily recognizable.

The UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime, in itstrafficking protocol, provides a definition of human trafficking but unlike theexample of international data gathering on drugs, no routine, sustainable datacollection efforts exist yet at the international level. Nevertheless, UNODChas on two occasions produced global reports on human trafficking, and theUnited States Department of State produces an annual, global, Trafficking inPersons Report (TIP) since 2001. Furthermore, the International Organization onMigration (IOM) gathers data on the trafficking victims that have been assistedby IOM's programs and the International Labor Organization (ILO) providesestimates of forced labor trafficking at global and regional levels.

UNODC's first attempt (UNODC, 2006) to produce a report on globalpatterns of cross-border human trafficking took a broad (and brave)methodological approach, both combining available statistics from member statesand supplementing them with content analysis from other sources—governmentreports, intergovernmental organization (IGO) reports, research reports,information from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and media reports. Thetime period covered was 1996 to 2003, and 161 countries and territories wereincluded in this report. This approach allowed the researchers to identifycountries as origin, transit or destination countries (or a combinationthereof), to diagram trafficking routes, flows and regional patterns, and toprovide a basic profile of victims, traffickers, trafficking groups. The reporthas a detailed and honest methodological chapter detailing definitions, codingand analysis, noting the many deficiencies of the data used and the caveats forinterpretation.

UNODC's second human-trafficking report (UNODC, 2009) limits theinformation gathered to that provided by governments and NGOs and placedresearchers in UNODC field offices to gather the data, which encompass 2003 to2007. Data were gathered from 155 countries and territories and included bothcriminal justice data (investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and convictions)and the number of victims known to authorities and sheltered by serviceproviders.

The US TIP report has more opaque methods that detail a widevariety of data sources but that do not detail coding or counting procedures. The Department of State places eachcountry in the TIP Report onto one of four tiers, as mandated by theTrafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. This placement reflects moreon how much action each country's government is taking to combat traffickingthan on the size of the problem. The 2003 TVPA Reauthorization Act alsorequires that foreign governments provide the Department of State with data ontrafficking investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and sentences in orderto be placed on Tier 1. Placement in lower tiers may mean the withdrawal of USfinancial assistance. Thus, one can argue that the focus of the US TIP reportis more on action taken to counter trafficking than on empirical researchresults.

The most interesting result in human-trafficking data is thedisjuncture between estimates and reports, and criminal justice data. Very fewcases are brought to the attention of criminal justice authorities compared tothe estimates of human trafficking in the population. Suffice it to say thateither the global prevalence estimates are exaggerated or governments(including criminal justice authorities) are woefully deficient in detectingcases of human trafficking.

Advancesin Knowledge and Promising Methods

In 2010, the National Institute of Justice convened an expertworking group on international organized crime. Part of the suggestions of thisworkshop pertain to new research methods for detecting and analyzingtransnational crime, as well as evaluating the success of anticrime measures. Anumber of themes emerged from these suggestions. First, research methods needto reach beyond criminology to encompass other disciplines such as politicalscience, economics, history, and business. Second, researchers should conductincreasingly comparative or international research or consider theinternational implications of localized studies. Third, qualitative methodsincluding ethnography need to be considered and included in the methodologicalrepertoire of scholars of transnational crime. Fourth, measures of harm need tobe expanded beyond economic measures to include social and public healthindicators. Finally, there is a crucial need for evaluation ofanti-transnational crime measures in this field. Some of the newest developments thatrelate to these themes are outlined in the next section.

New Data Sources

Van Dijk argues that criminologists cannot rely on traditionalmeasures of crime to measure transnational crime and instead must develop newways to measure transnational crime. He suggests the systematic collection ofopen source documents—those reports of crime in the media and fromparliamentary rapporteurs, ombudsmen, NGOs, and IGOs. UNODC's 2006 report onhuman trafficking was an example of this new strategy. Van Dijk gathered surveydata of the perception of business executives on racketeering and extortionconducted by the World Economic Forum and risk assessment of organized crimeproduced by the London-based consultancy company Merchant International Group.Combining data from other sources, he constructed a composite Organized CrimePerception Index for countries and regions of the globe.

Othercriminologists have delved into wiretap data. These data are sometimesavailable from extensive police investigations and depending on their quality,can be coded in a variety of ways and analyzed through social network analysis,described below.

Extensive registries of victims that are maintained by serviceproviders, such as the one maintained by the IOM, may provide increasinglyuseful data for research. For over 10 years, the IOM has maintained astandardized counter-trafficking data management tool, the Counter-TraffickingModule (CTM), the largest global database with primary data on victims oftrafficking.

Social media will be used increasingly to gauge corruption andprevent some kinds of transnational crime. A popular interactive website, http://Ipaidabribe.com, functions for India,Kenya, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan, and is expected to be active soon inMongolia and the Philippines. It asks the public to report instances of bribepaying and bribe-paying resistance or to report honest officials. http://OFWwatch.com is a website maintained by Overseas Filipino Workers. Itencourages workers to submit reports on their recruitment agency so that otherscan be aware of abuse and human-trafficking risks before they acceptemployment. It maintains a directory with this information.