New Research Project - Criminal hands, state ends: State-sponsored assassinations using organised crime

A new SOC ACE research project is examining how governments increasingly rely on organised crime networks to carry out targeted assassinations.

States may outsource lethal operations to criminal actors to minimise political risk, maintain plausible deniability, and hide their direct involvement.

There is mounting evidence of collaboration between state authorities and transnational criminal groups - with research connecting statecraft, assassination, and organised crime.

However, while criminology, intelligence studies, and international relations each touch on aspects of this, no unified analytical framework currently accounts for states’ outsourcing violence criminal groups, or how these covert partnerships function.

The project aims to bridge this gap by drawing together academic scholarship and grey literature to examine the recruitment, financing, and operational arrangements that underpin these relationships. It maps how states structure command‑and‑control systems, task criminal intermediaries, and maintain deniability throughout an operation.

Using a multidisciplinary literature review, comparative case studies, and analysis of both primary and secondary sources, the research explores key questions: why states employ criminals for assassinations, how these actors are selected and paid, how covert oversight is maintained, and which legal, diplomatic, and financial tools may be effective in disrupting networks.

For more information visit the project web-page here.