By Marcena Hunter

While gold is often referred to as a blood mineral due to its role in conflict financing, the relationship between the gold sector, instability and violence is far more nuanced, with complex regional dynamics. In the gold production hub of West Africa, where artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is pervasive, an increasing tide of insecurity and violence in recent years adds to the complexity of the sector. Woven into the region’s convoluted web of actors, activity and supply chains are criminal networks that link local mines to international trade hubs, exploiting the gold sector for financial gain and power. The analysis in this report demonstrates that the reality of the relationships between gold, conflict and criminality challenges the simplistic narrative of ‘blood minerals’ used to finance conflict, offering a far more nuanced understanding of the significance of the gold sector in West Africa. Rather, gold is closely intertwined with survival, money, power and criminality. Criminality, fragility and violence While literature on the relationship between gold and instability has often focused on conflict financing, the interplay between gold, governance and criminality can contribute to instability and violence before any form of conflict financing takes place. Criminal exploitation of the gold sector is fostered by persistent and widespread informality, due in part to the significant barriers to entry in the formal sector, and the lack of support for informal miners and gold traders. As a result, corrupt and criminal elites in the political and business spheres can capture illicit gold flows, further contributing to community frustrations that can give rise to conflict. Limiting access to the gold sector by restricting access to mine deposits or conducting crackdowns on unlicensed ASGM can also undermine the legitimacy of state actors. Thus, efforts to stabilize West Africa must account for complex criminal interests while also addressing the long-standing grievances and expectations of local communities.1 Such efforts are critical in both conflict-laden areas and stable areas to reduce the risk of conflict spreading. Where the gold sector contributes to conflict financing in West Africa, it can vary significantly in form and value. In locations where conflict and gold mining overlap, armed groups may target the gold sector by taxing mining and trade activities, demanding payment from miners for providing security, or establishing checkpoints along roads to mine sites and trade hubs for payment collection. Members of armed groups may also directly engage in gold mining, either for personal financial gain or to benefit the group. Yet in many regions, gold is not the primary source of revenue for armed groups; other industries like the livestock sector are also targets. Sitting in the space between increased fragility and conflict are local self-defence and identity militia groups, which can act in cooperation or in competition with the state.2 In West Africa, these groups fall on a spectrum ranging from hybrid security institutions to mafia-style protection rackets run by ‘violent entrepreneurs’. There is a heavy overlap between these groups and the gold sector, with many instances of groups providing security at gold mine sites and along transportation routes. Yet, the origins of the different groups, their roles in local communities and the gold sector, and their role in conflict dynamics vary greatly.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2022. 61p.

By Sjoukje van Deuren, Robby Roks & Teun van Ruitenburg

Outlaw biker clubs have drawn considerable attention of law enforcement agencies across European countries. Despite law enforcement efforts, the popularity of the outlaw biker subculture has been on the rise recently. There is, however, still little understanding of how individuals become engaged in the outlaw biker subculture. Using unique data from interviews with current members of the Dutch Hells Angels (N = 24), this article addresses the entry mechanisms into the club and how individuals become full-patched members. The results show that active recruitment by the Hells Angels MC and gradually growing into the club’s membership are common entering mechanisms. Pre-existing social ties, both on the club and the individual level, play a significant role for involvement in Dutch Hells Angels membership. Moreover, the Dutch Hells Angels apply various mechanisms to establish the trustworthiness, loyalty, and suitability of a person before becoming a full-patched member of the club.

Trends in Organized Crime, 2024.

By Tracey Kyckelhahn, Tiffany Choi

This study expands on prior Commission research by examining the geographic mobility of federal offenders. For this report, mobility is defined as having convictions in multiple states, including the location of the conviction for the instant offense. This report adds to the existing literature on offender criminal history in two important ways. First, the report provides information on how mobile federal offenders are, as measured by the number of offenders with convictions in multiple states. Second, the report provides information on the proportion of offenders with convictions in states other than the state in which the offender was convicted for the instant offense. The report also examines the degree to which out-of-state convictions in offenders’ criminal histories contributed to their criminal history score and their Criminal History Category.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2020.  24p.

By Mark Twain.

The Facts Concerning The Recent Carnival Of Crime In Connecticut. “Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old. Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape; and so, while one could not put his finger upon any particular part and say, “This is a conspicuous deformity,” the spectator perceived that this little person was a deformity as a whole—a vague, general, evenly blended, nicely adjusted deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the face and the sharp little eyes, and also alertness and malice. And yet, this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and ill-defined resemblance to me! “

Atlantic Monthly June (1876) 17 pages.

By Maurice de Fleury.

“The science of the human brain has assumed such importance within a quarter of a century, it has so quickly reached so high a degree of precision, it results from so thorough and unanimous an agreement among biologists of all countries, it throws so strong a light upon the phenomena of the mind, that it would now be quite impossible to dispense with it in treating of general psychology, and more especially of criminal psychology. That knowledge—attended at first sight with disconcerting difficulties and alarms, by reason of its complexity—may, nevertheless, be easily simplified and placed within the reach of the least studious minds. For those who go deeply into it, the knowledge of the functions of the brain quickly assumes the pure lines, the harmonious proportions and the symmetrical arrangement of a typical French gardzn, with its straight walks, cut out in the dim forest of the old classical psychology.! Let us walk together in that garden, keeping a few plans, mere rudimentary drawings, under our eyes, lest we should lose our way. Here is one, in the first place, which represents the topography, the geography of one half of the brain,” or, to employ the phrase in use, the cerebral localizations on the left hemisphere.”

London: Downey & Co., 1901. 196p.

By Arthur Macdonald.

Being Essays on Education and Crime and Related Subjects, With Digests of Literature and a Bibliography. The present work may perhaps be considered as an introduction to abnormality in general, giving a description, diagnosis, and synthesis of human abnormalities, which seem to be constant factors in society.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Education, Government Printing Office, 1893. 463p.

By J. Sanderson Christison.

“Last winter I contributed a series of articles to the Chicago Tribune under the caption of "Jail Types," which were so favorably noticed, both in Europe and America, that my friends have urged their appearance in book form. With some typographical corrections, the articles are here presented in their original text, with a number of additional sketches. While they do not constitute a systematic treatise on the subject of criminology, they present the points of most importance in a form and style intended to attract and interest the general reader, who will find much to reflect upon in the line of duty as a member of society at large.” (from Preface)

Chicago: THE W. T. Keener Co. 1897 117p.

By Robert Anderson.

Some Facts and Suggestions,. “It is to the public therefore that this volume is addressed. For if the public became alive to the fact that all the principal offences against property are the work of small bands of professional criminals, and that the professional criminal is the creature of our punishment of crime system, we should soon have a popular outcry in favour of the reforms here advocated.” (from Preface)

London: James Nisbet & Co., 1907. 204p.

By Clarence Darrow

An Address Delivered to the Prisoners in the Chicago County Jail. “Some of my good friends have insisted that while my theories are true, I should not have even them to inmates of a jail. Realizing the force of the suggestion that the truth should not be spoken to all people, I have caused these remarks to be printed on rather good paper and in a somewhat expensive form. In this way the truth does not become cheap and vulgar, and is only placed before those whose intelligence and affluence will prevent their being influenced by it. “ Clarene Darrow, Preface.

Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1910. 36p.

By Sytske Besemer.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree', 'Like father like son', 'Chip off the old block'. All these idioms seem to suggest that offspring resemble their parents and this also applies to criminal behaviour. This dissertation investigates mechanisms that might explain why children with criminal parents have a higher risk of committing crime. Several explanations for this intergenerational transmission have been contrasted, such as social learning (imitation of behaviour), official bias against certain families, and transmission of risk factors. Sytske Besemer investigated this in England as well as in the Netherlands. She answers questions such as: does it matter when the parents committed crime in the child's life? Do more persistent offenders transmit crime more than sporadic offenders? Do violent offenders specifically transmit violent behaviour or general crime to their children? Might the police and courts be biased against certain families? Could a deprived environment explain why parents as well as children show criminal behaviour? Does parental imprisonment pose an extra risk? This dissertation is the first study to specifically investigate these mechanisms of intergenerational continuity. The study is scientifically relevant because of its breadth, integration of conviction data as well as data on self-reported offending and environmental risk factors, its comparative design and the long periods over which transmission is investigated. Furthermore, the dissertation has important policy implications. It demonstrates how penal policy designed to reduce criminal behaviour might actually increase this behaviour in the next generation. This is especially important since Western countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands show an increasing trend towards more punitive policies.

Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2012. 198p.

By Havelock Ellis.

The “science” of criminality as presented by the famous psychiatrist Havelock Ellis. Lavishly illustrated with empirical and physical evidence to support his theories, findings and other truth claims. In this 4th edition (1910) of The Criminal first published in 1890, Ellis is pleased that there is “an approximation to general agreement” concerning his findings.

London. New York. Walter Scott Publishing. (1910) 494 pages.