Examining Facilitators of Transnational Organized Crime: Developing Typologies and Understanding Modalities

• In Event: Mafia and Organized Crime: Leadership, Recruitment, and Facilitators

Abstract

Criminal facilitators help transnational criminal organizations conduct their illegal activities across national borders often by exploiting legal institutions to launder money, forge documents or smuggle goods, or augment otherwise legal activities with fraud or theft that aids transnational organized crime (TOC) networks. We utilized a methodology for identifying facilitating crimes and offenders in federal sentencing data to develop typologies and modalities of criminal organizations and facilitators derived from systematically collected data and evidence. In the first step, we used electronic data collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to sample convicted offenders who appear to be facilitators. In the second step, we reviewed pre-sentence investigation reports for those who appear to be facilitators to determine whether they were, in fact, facilitators with ties to TOC. We then coded detailed information for each identified facilitator and their co-defendants, collecting information at the individual and the case level, to inform the typologies. The resulting typologies of facilitators of transnational organized crime and the modalities for conducting these crimes will be discussed.

Authors

• Meg Chapman, Abt Associates

• Kamala Smith, Abt Associates

• Omri Drucker, Abt Associates

• Sarah Jalbert, Abt Associates, Inc.

• Sharmini Radakrishnan, Abt Associates