Understanding the new geographies of organised crime: Empirical studies into the spatialities of organised criminal phenomena

Ella Cockbain, Patrizio Estevez-Soto, Felia Allum

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Organised crime – and the people, processes and structures involved – do not exist in a geographical vacuum. They have an inherent spatiality: shaped by and shaping the places they occupy in physical, virtual and hybrid spaces. Although the ‘social embeddedness’ of organised crime is relatively well-recognised, its spatiality – or ‘spatial embeddedness’ – has been neglected. This article contextualises and introduces our special issue on the new geographies of organised crime. We put forward a central argument that geographical lenses can advance and enrich understanding of organised crime, briefly review relevant literature and explain some of the foundational concepts in geographical thinking. We discuss the rationale for this special issue and highlight its papers’ main contributions. Since the geographies of the illicit are full of complexities, heterogeneities and subjectivities, we do not propose any singular approach, but rather see a plurality of possibilities for better incorporating geography into organised crime scholarship. Accordingly, the papers are theoretically and methodologically diverse, as well as covering varied topics and locations.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3-20
Number of pages18
JournalCriminology and Criminal Justice
Volume25
Issue number1
Early online date23 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 23 Dec 2024

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant Reference: ES/S008624/1), which funded the symposium underpinning this special issue. We thank all our participants and authors for their important contributions, and our colleague Peter Gudge for all his help with logistics.

FundersFunder number
Economic and Social Research Council

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