Differentiating criminal networks in the illegal wildlife trade: organized, corporate and disorganized crime

Wyatt, Tanya, van Uhm, Daan and Nurse, Angus ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2486-4973 (2020) Differentiating criminal networks in the illegal wildlife trade: organized, corporate and disorganized crime. Trends in Organized Crime, 23 (4) . pp. 350-366. ISSN 1084-4791 [Article] (doi:10.1007/s12117-020-09385-9)

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Abstract

Historically, the poaching of wildlife was portrayed as a small-scale local activity in which only small numbers of wildlife would be smuggled illegally by collectors or opportunists. Nowadays, this image has changed: criminal networks are believed to be highly involved in wildlife trafficking, which has become a significant area of illicit activity. Even though wildlife trafficking has become accepted as a major area of crime and an important topic and criminologists have examined a variety of illegal wildlife markets, research that specifically focusses on the involvement of different criminal networks and their specific nature is lacking. The concept of a ‘criminal network’ or ‘serious organized crime’ is amorphous – getting used interchangeably and describes all crime that is structured rather than solely reflecting crime that fits within normative definitions of ‘organized’ crime. In reality, criminal networks are diverse. As such, we propose categories of criminal networks that are evidenced in the literature and within our own fieldwork: (1) organized crime groups (2) corporate crime groups and (3) disorganized criminal networks. Whereas there are instances when these groups act alone, this article will (also) discuss the overlap and interaction that occurs between our proposed categories and discuss the complicated nature of the involved criminal networks as well as predictions as to the future of these networks.

Item Type: Article
Keywords (uncontrolled): Green criminology, Illegal wildlife trade, Wildlife trafficking, Organised crime, Corporate crime
Research Areas: A. > School of Law > Criminology and Sociology
Item ID: 31139
Notes on copyright: © The Author(s) 2020
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Depositing User: Repository team
Date Deposited: 08 Oct 2020 17:13
Last Modified: 09 Feb 2022 10:38
URI: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/id/eprint/31139

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