While the success of national and international law enforcement cooperation to suppress organized crime means that stable, large-scale criminal organizations like the Cosa Nostra or the Japanese Yakuza have seen their power reduced, organized crime remains a concern for many governments. Economic globalization and the easing of restrictions on exchanges across borders now provide ample opportunity for money-making activities in illegal markets. Policies designed to stop illegal market flows often shift these activities to new places or create new problems, as the U.S.- led war on drugs spread production and trafficking to a number South and Central American countries. The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime provides informed, authoritative, and comprehensive overviews of these issues and other principal forms of organized crime, as well as the type and effectiveness of efforts to prevent and control them.

Leading scholars from criminology, law, sociology, history, and political science discuss the key concepts, history, and methods of organized crime; the major actors and interactions involved in it; the markets and activities frequently associated with organized crime; and the policies designed to combat it. Individual chapters on criminal organizations and specific activities or markets comprise the heart of the volume. The chapters on actors provide the history, analyze the structure and activities, and assess the strength and future prospects of each organization. Articles on particular markets address the patterns of activity, identify the most affected regions, and where possible provide estimated revenues, discuss factors promoting the activity, and disclose information on the victims and harms caused. The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime delivers a systematic, high-quality, and truly global approach to the topic and with it a more complete understanding of organized crime in its many forms for researchers, government officials, and policymakers.

Letizia Paoli is Professor of Criminology at the University of Leuven Faculty of Law, Belgium. She is the author of Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime Italian Style, coauthor (with Victoria A. Greenfield and Peter Reuter) of The World Heroin Market: Can Heroin Supply Be Cut? and (with Alessandro Donati) of The Sports Doping Market: Understanding Supply and Demand, and the Challenges of Their Control, and coeditor (with Cyrille Fijnaut) of Organised Crime in Europe.

List of Contributors

Introduction
Letizia Paoli

Part I Concept, Theories, History, and Research Methods
1. Organized Crime: A Contested Concept
Letizia Paoli and Tom Vander Beken
2. Theoretical Perspectives on Organized Crime
Edward R. Kleemans
3. Searching for Organized Crime in History
Cyrille Fijnaut
4. How to Research Organized Crime
Dick Hobbs and Georgios A. Antonopoulos

Part II Actors and Interactions
5. The Italian Mafia
Letizia Paoli
6. The Italian-American Mafia
Jay S. Albanese
7. The Russian Mafia: Rise and Extincion
Vadim Volkov
8. Organized Crime in Colombia: The Actors Running the Illegal Drug Industry
Francisco E. Thoumi
9. Mexican Drug "Cartels"
Monica Medel and Francisco E. Thoumi
10. Chinese Organized Crime
Ko Lin-Chin
11. The Japanese Yakuza
Peter Hill
12. Nigerian Criminal Organizations
Phil Willliams
13. Gangs: Another Form of Organized Crime?
Scott H. Decker and David C. Pyrooz
14. Opportunistic Structures of Organized Crime
Martin Bouchard and Carlo Morselli
15. Organizing Crime: The State as Agent
Susanne Karstedt
16. The Social Embeddedness of Organized Crime
Henk van de Bunt, Dina Siegel, and Damián Zaitch

Part III Markets and Activities
17. Protection and Extortion
Federico Varese
18. Drug Markets and Organized Crime
Peter Reuter
19. Human Smuggling, Human Trafficking, and Exploitation in the Sex Industry
Edward R. Kleemans and Monika Smit
20. Illegal Gambling
Toine Spapens
21. Money Laundering
Michael Levi
22. Arms Trafficking
Andrew Feinstein and Paul Holden
23. Organized Fraud
Michael Levi
24. Cybercrime
Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo and Peter Grabosky
25. The Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources
Tim Boekhout van Solinge

Part IV Policies to Control Organized Crime
26. Organized Crime Control in the United States of America
James B. Jacobs and Elizabeth Dondlinger Wyman
27. U.S. Organized Crime Control Policies Exported Abroad
Margaret Beare and Michael Woodiwiss
28. European Union Organized Crime Control Policies
Cyrille Fijnaut
29. The Fight against the Mafia in Italy
Antonio La Spina
30. Organized Crime Control in Australia and New Zealand
Julie Ayling and Roderic Broadhurst
31. Organized Crime "Control" in Asia: Experiences from India, China, and the Golden Triangle
Roderic Broadhurst and Nicholas Farrelly
32. Finance-Oriented Strategies of Organized Crime Control
Michael Kilchling

Index