Networked territorialism: the routes and roots of organised crime

In the digital age, space has become increasingly structured by the circuitry of global capital, communications and commodities. This ‘network society’ splinters and fragments territorial space according to the hidden logic of networked global capital; with successful criminal entrepreneurs connecting bases in low-risk, controllable territories with high-profit markets. Drawing on a recent, large-scale study of organised crime in Scotland, in this paper we elaborate the relationship between place, territory and criminal markets in two contrasting communities. The first is an urban neighbourhood with a longstanding organised crime footprint, where recognised local criminal groups have established deep roots. The second is a rural community with a negligible organised crime footprint, where the drug economy is serviced by a mobile criminal network based in England. Through comparison of the historical roots and contemporary routes of these criminal markets, we note both similarity and difference. While both communities demonstrated evidence of ‘networked territorialism’, key differences related to historical and social antecedents, in particular the impact of deindustrialisation.

Economic woes may change narcotics incentives in Iran

Significance COVID-19-related closures are both changing trade patterns and putting new pressure on economic actors in Iran, including the state itself. The drug economy is an important source of revenue in particular for south-eastern and other borderland communities in Iran. Impacts Further economic collapse would increase the risk of drug money entering Iran’s electoral politics and mainstream economy. The poor and newly unemployed could seek alternative livelihoods in the narcotics trade, increasing societal and cross-border tensions. If Iran's interdiction efforts weaken, European countries will see a strong surge in inflows of heroin and methamphetamines. Washington would use any alleged state connections to the illegal drug economy further to isolate Tehran from the international community.

The Narco Uncanny

This article analyzes the unease created in northern Mexico by the prevalence of “narco-accusations,” which single out individuals suspected of being drug traffickers. The official discourse to justify the Mexican government’s unwillingness to investigate the majority of the 235,000 murders created by the “war on drugs” since 2006 is that the deaths consist of “narcos killing each other off.” However, as a result of the profound interlocking of legal and illegal sectors, most forms of livelihood in the borderlands are potentially implicated in the drug economy. Therefore, the way that deaths are dismissed when labeled as those of “narcos” produces a particular discomfort among people working at the blurry edges of the narco-economy. By analyzing these experiences through the lens of “the uncanny” this article argues that the subject position of the narco is not just derivative of a set of political discourses but a powerful way that people attempt to distance themselves, and their loved ones, from violence.

Prisoner Society in an Era of Psychoactive Substances, Organized Crime, New Drug Markets and Austerity

Framed by the limited and now dated ethnographic research on the prison drug economy, this article offers new theoretical and empirical insights into how drugs challenge the social order in prisons in England and Wales. It draws on significant original and rigorous ethnographic research to argue that the ‘era of hard drugs’ has been superseded by an ‘era of new psychoactive drugs’, redefining social relations, transforming the prison illicit economy, producing new forms of prison victimization and generating far greater economic power and status for suppliers. These changes represent the complex interplay and compounding effects of broader shifts in political economy, technological advances, organized crime, prison governance and the declining legitimacy and moral performance of English and Welsh prisons.

Architectures, spaces, and territories of illicit drug trafficking in Colombia and Mexico

This research applies an interdisciplinary approach to the bidirectional relationship between illicit drug trafficking activities (specifically, cocaine and opioid trafficking in Colombia and Mexico) and the architectures, spaces, and territories in which they are located. Certain spaces that determine or are determined by the actions of drug trafficking organizations are described, analyzed, and classified based on various methodologies and the use of academic, official, and press information. In addition, case studies are reconstructed using architectural and geographic representation mechanisms to exemplify and illustrate the main arguments. The paper examines the three stages of activity that constitute the illegal drug economy: production (involving the placement of crop fields and laboratories), distribution (which entails exploitation of mobility infrastructure), and cross-cutting activities in relation to drug trafficking support spaces. The research provides an articulated interpretation of the various drug trafficking activities from a spatial perspective, the characterization of spaces that are important to criminal organizations and to the performance of their activities, and insights into the spatial thinking strategies and tactics associated with drug trafficking.