An official website of the United States government
The rapid growth of illicit supply chains during and after the Covid-19 pandemic reveals a need for effectively combating and preventing the cross-border movement of contraband, including but not limited to counterfeit goods. A proactive approach by companies along with public stakeholders, such as government agencies and individual consumers, toward disrupting illicit supply chains operating across borders is especially important during moments of global crisis when consumers are more susceptible to unknowingly purchasing substandard counterfeit products such as respirators. While marketplaces, platforms, and other legitimate businesses have worked to prevent movement of counterfeits and illicit goods through their services, the high adaptability and sophistication of counterfeiters requires more preventative and multistakeholder approaches. This article outlines a multidisciplinary and multilayered approach to detecting and disrupting illicit supply chains of counterfeit personal protective equipment (PPE) with a focus on respirators. It utilizes research conducted for a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant on Covid-19 related crime, including the advertising and sale of counterfeit respirators. One layer examines online content as seen by the end user and the activity of vendors or sellers used to advertise and sell counterfeit products. The research is also informed by data on the information, financial, and physical flows of counterfeit respirators obtained through a public-private partnership with George Mason University’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC-GMU) and 3M, one of the largest manufacturers of respirators in the world. The article examines an important and relatively recent trend - how emerging technological shifts in the marketplace are affecting global security. Research from the TraCCC-GMU and 3M partnership, including a data sharing agreement, revealed that counterfeiters constantly change their modus operandi to continue selling illicit goods with impunity, facilitating illicit activity with the use and abuse of legitimate companies such as ecommerce marketplaces and social media. The article presents an overview of the current state of counterfeit supply chains and provides concrete policy recommendations on how legitimate companies can move beyond just removing listings but must also actively prevent these transnational crimes through innovative multidisciplinary approaches, advanced data analytics, and public awareness campaigns. The research also seeks to connect the dots to broader policy implications in terms of the legitimate economy and environmental sustainability.
more »
« less
Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand
Illicit supply networks (ISNs) are composed of coordinated human actors that source, transit, and distribute illicitly traded goods to consumers, while also creating widespread social and environmental harms. Despite growing documentation of ISNs and their impacts, efforts to understand and disrupt ISNs remain insufficient due to the persistent lack of knowledge connecting a given ISN’s modus operandi and its patterns of activity in space and time. The core challenge is that the data and knowledge needed to integrate it remain fragmented and/or compartmentalized across disciplines, research groups, and agencies tasked with understanding or monitoring one or a few specific ISNs. One path forward is to conduct comparative analyses of multiple diverse ISNs. We present and apply a conceptual framework for linking ISN modus operandi to spatial-temporal dynamics and patterns of activity. We demonstrate this through a comparative analysis of three ISNs – cocaine, illegally traded wildlife, and illegally mined sand – which range from well-established to emergent, global to domestic in geographic scope, and fully illicit to de facto legal. The proposed framework revealed consistent traits related to geographic price structure, value capture at different supply chain stages, and key differences among ISN structure and operation related to commodity characteristics and their relative illicitness. Despite the diversity of commodities and ISN attributes compared, social and environmental harms inflicted by the illicit activity consistently become more widespread with increasing law enforcement disruption. Drawing on these lessons from diverse ISNs, which varied in their histories and current sophistication, possible changes in the structure and function of nascent and/or low salience ISNs may be anticipated if future conditions or law enforcement pressure change.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10287254
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of illicit economies and development
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2516-7227
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 50-73
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract This article reviews extant multidisciplinary literature to uncover existing themes and directions in the knowledge of the overlap between natural resource scarcity and illicit supply chain activity. In doing so, the authors present a novel review of this nascent, complex, and multidisciplinary research area. This review has uncovered 127 articles that have not been synthesized or organized in a meaningful way with the supply chain literature. It extracts insights and develops a comprehensive process framework encompassing the following: (a) antecedents associated with natural resource extraction, which foments the opportunity for illicit activity to thrive; (b) resulting economic, social, and environmental outcomes from illicit activity as it relates to natural resource extraction; and (c) potential moderating processes, which either enable or inhibit illicit activity to occur, including firm‐level tactics that businesses can employ to counteract illicit activity throughout the supply chain and to promote sustainable long‐term operations. An extensive agenda is presented suggesting future research paths, methodologies, theories, and potential contributions.more » « less
-
Law enforcement interventions continue to be the primary mechanism used to identify offenders and illicit businesses involved in human trafficking, yet trafficking continues to be a thriving international operation. We explore alternative mechanisms to disrupt illicit operations and reduce victimization through labor trafficking supply chains using supply chain disruption theory. Using a case study approach to examine one federally prosecuted labor trafficking case in the agricultural sector, we (1) extend criminological concepts of disruption by identifying sources and methods of disruption and (2) inform criminal justice system responses by presenting novel methods of assessing effectiveness of anti-human trafficking policies and programs.more » « less
-
The rise in crime rates over the past few years is a major issue and is a huge source of worry for police departments and law enforcement organizations. Crime severely harms the lives of victims and the communities they live in many places throughout the world. It is an issue of public disturbance, and large cities often see criminal activity. Many studies, media, and websites include statistics on crime and it is contributing elements, such as population, unemployment, and poverty rate. This paper compares and visualizes the crime data for four different cities in the USA, namely Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas, and Denton. We assess areas that are significantly affected based on zip codes and variations in crime categories. As the crime rates have significantly changed both upward and downward throughout time, these changes are compared to their external causes such as population, unemployment, and poverty. The results show crime frequency and distribution across four different cities and supply valuable information about the complex relationship between social factors and criminal behavior. These results and outcomes will help the police department and law enforcement organizations better understand crime issues, map crime incidents onto a geographical map, and supply insight into factors affecting crime that will help them deploy resources and help in their decision-making process.more » « less
-
United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (Ed.)Illicit gold flows constitute a major development challenge for governments and a social responsibility challenge for the jewellery industry, which accounts for the majority of global gold demand. This paper highlights aspects of gold supply chains that lack transparency and may indicate junctures where illicit activities are taking place, resulting in a loss of tax and customs revenues. Using Peru and Kenya as case study countries, we draw from United Nations Comtrade data and qualitative data from field research to examine the magnitude of the gold trade, the forms in which gold is traded, and key trade partners for each country. We suggest that midstream portions of gold supply chains should be given more attention, certain types of gold exports and imports present greater traceability challenges than others, and some countries play a much more significant role in the global jewellery trade. We propose areas where further investigations may be warranted to ensure more transparent and responsible gold supply chains.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.31389/jied.76
