This reserach explores politically feasible security sector reform approaches to tackling serious organised crime, drawing on lessons of success from Georgia, Colombia and South Africa.

The research project aims to deepen the evidence base on the connections between SSR/G and SOC – how they influence and impact one another, positively and adversely. It seeks to encourage collaboration across academic disciplines and professional silos, integrating SSR/G perspectives and programming into the fight against SOC and vice versa.

This research results from the opportunity provided by the approval and implementation of the Total Peace policy in Colombia, a country that, despite the signature of a peace process in 2016, still has numerous armed and criminal groups inflicting significant violence onto the population. The Total Peace policy allows the government to negotiate with armed and criminal groups in order to reduce violence and protect life, providing a unique opportunity to conduct research on ongoing negotiations. This project aims to research the legal framework applied for the different types of engagement at the local and national level, the way in which criminal governance and the Total Peace policy interacts and identify the extent into which legal frameworks and local criminal governance structures shape negotiations with armed and criminal groups in Colombia.

This project applies lessons from irregular warfare to countering organized crime. Irregular warfare is often defined as a violent competition over legitimacy, and it subsumes the problems of terrorism, insurgency, and political instability. Phase 1 of this research project established the commonalities between organized crime and irregular warfare: their shared nature and the pitfalls relating to response. On this basis, Phase 2 presents a Framework for Analysis and Action originally designed for irregular warfare but adapted here to the context of organized crime. The Framework consists of two “parts”: the Strategic Estimate (which maps the problem, explores its drivers, frames, and strategies, and critiques the current response) and the Course of Action (which uses the Estimate to design an appropriate strategy, complete with a theory of success, phasing, assumptions, and metrics). In a third phase of this project, the modified framework will be tested through application to key cases.

This research analyses the drivers of armed violence linked to organised crime. It is a scoping exercise of the academic and policy literature on organised crime and violence, looking closely at the evidence related to causes of violence linked specifically to organised crime. It also briefly analyses some important trends in research on environmental and societal factors influencing the likelihood of criminal violence. It provides brief case studies that illustrate different drivers at play.

This research paper examines the nexus between para-statal armed groups (PAGs), illicit economies and organized crime, with a particular focus on the borderlands of Afghanistan, Myanmar and Colombia. It draws upon new data and analysis generated by a four-year GCRF project, Drugs & (Dis)order. This involved longitudinal, mixed methods research in nine drugs- and conflict-affected borderlands, where PAGs have become embedded within the political, military and economic landscape. The paper sets out a new conceptual framework for analysing the organised crime-militia nexus in conflict-affected borderlands.

Organised crime actors can be spoilers in peace processes or partners in peace. Negotiating with organised crime groups and addressing criminal agendas in peace processes has become a reality in practice. It may be preferable in contexts where repressive tactics have failed to resolve the problem or worse, have fuelled more violence and criminality. Out of options, state actors have turned to negotiation. Negotiation may not only be considered preferable, but also necessary where criminal groups have strong territorial control, filling governance gaps and gaining legitimacy. International peace operations have also begun to recognise the need to address SOC to avoid entrenching criminal structures in the post-conflict state.

Like most cities, the Medellín Mayor’s Office and the Colombian police focus their efforts on managing what they measure--homicides and violent crime. While of course there are legitimate reasons to tackle violence, there is relatively less attention to other deleterious effects of SOC: high levels of civilian extortion, criminal political control of civilians, criminal capture of local state and community governments, retail drug sales, and so forth. In addition to being costly in and of themselves, these actions also undermine the local control and legitimacy of the state. We believe that these harmful consequences are overlooked in part because they are not measured. We aim to demonstrate the feasibility of collecting a wide variety of metrics on SOC and establish the practice of collecting, monitoring, and using these metrics for policy analysis and program/policy design and evaluation.

This project seeks to address a number of gaps in the evidence base on the effectiveness of sanctions use by countries to tackle SOC. It aims to make a key contribution as an independent study of existing experience of using sanctions against SOC – and the lessons this experience holds for the UK.