COVID-19 and Organized Crime: Strategies employed by criminal groups to increase their profits and power in the first months of the pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created new opportunities for organized criminal groups and confronted them with new challenges. Analysis of how these groups have reacted to the pandemic yields better understanding of how they work and enables the devising of more effective counter-strategies. To this end, we identified illustrative cases regarding the provision of illegal governance and infiltration of the legal economy by conducting a systematic content analysis of international media articles and institutional reports published during the first eight months after the outbreak of the pandemic (January to August 2020). These cases were further analyzed in order to cluster the behavior of criminal groups in response to the COVID-19 emergency, and the means by which they tried to exploit the pandemic to strengthen their political and economic power. We found that different governance-type criminal groups proposed themselves as institutions able to mitigate the burdens imposed by the pandemic by providing support to people in need and enforcing social-distancing measures. Further, identified cases did not provide evidence of groups devoted to the provision of illicit services and goods assuming any governance role. In this respect, the available evidence supports previous knowledge about organized crime. Cases of misappropriation of public funds and organized crime infiltration of the legal economy seem less common, at least in the first phase of the pandemic. The wholesale distribution of pharmaceuticals and medicines has been the sector targeted the most.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Crime: a Systematic Review

“…Homicides are often committed in the context of organized crime or gang-violence (National Gang Center; Vichi et al, 2020) and it has been suggested that members of such criminal organizations might not adhere to COVID-19 measures. Institutional reports and international media reports indicate that criminal organizations tried to retain or increase their criminal activities during COVID-19 (Aziani et al, 2021). In line with deterrence theory (Becker, 1968) the economic benefit of organized crimes might outweigh the risk of a COVID-19 infection or a fine for violating COVID-19 measures.…”

Convergence Between Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking of Goods: Text Analysis of Open-Source Data

“…These limitations are mainly related to the inability to accurately measure such vague and hidden phenomena as human smuggling and transnational crimes (Andreas and Greenhill 2011;Merry 2016). This would be especially true for newspapers that, due to editorial preferences, may be more incline towards more sensationalist or newsworthy events (Aziani et al 2023;S. Chermak 1995;Ditton and Duffy 1983), and the possible presence of fake news, especially in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic (Gradoń 2020).…”

Pandemic Micropolitics in Latin America: Small Business and the Governance of Crisis From Above and Below in El Salvador

“…Criminal organisations, for instance, operate as de facto parallel governance actors who challenge formal State legitimacy and territorial control (Lessing, 2021; Magaloni et al, 2020). During the pandemic, these groups often moved to fill governance voids through activities related to enforcing lockdown rules, delivery of masks and antigen tests, cash handouts, and price controls on basic goods (Aziani et al, 2021; Cavgias et al, 2021; Muggah and Dudley, 2021). In governing from below through both the threat of violence and community solidarity, organised criminal groups in certain instances appear to have bolstered their authority and legitimacy in opposition to the state in support of their own economic and political interests (Gomez, 2020).…”