Crime Case Study

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Organized Crime. Southeastern Europe, also known as the Balkan region came under communist or socialist regimes after World War II (“Crime and Its Impact...” 2008). While the regimes differed, they all relied on “well-resourced police agencies to maintain internal order” (“Crime and Its Impact... 2008). Many of these security forces operated above the law in conjunction with organized criminals. The ties between organized crime and the state were only strengthened during the 1990s following the violent dismantling of Yugoslavia and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. This was because “after international sanctions were imposed, great fortunes were made smuggling weapons, oil, and other commodities needed by the warring …show more content…

This allows us to create maps of the trafficked areas and requires us to pay attention to reports of organized crime in order to understand which organized crime units in the Balkan region facilitate this trade the most.
RESEARCH DESIGN
In order to investigate the affects organized crime’s influence over elected political officials has on the Balkan drug route, I plan to look at the transparencies of certain countries in the Balkan region in order to gauge how corrupt their elected political officials are. The influence is measured by the level of corruption in a country, using data from reports created by Transparency International and The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
I will compare this to the data of the tons of heroin seized over that same period of time because a decrease in the amount of heroin seized means that organized crime’s influence over political officials has been effective. Meaning, if the level of corruption increases as the amount of heroin seized decreases, then organized crime has an influence over political officials that results in the easy trafficking of drugs. My time frame is from the dismantling of Yugoslavia and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc to present

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