IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/fglcxx/v6y2004i2p159-184.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Organized Crime and Trust: On the conceptualization and empirical relevance of trust in the context of criminal networks

Author

Listed:
  • Klaus von Lampe
  • Per Ole Johansen

Abstract

Organised crime networks are often characterised as being held together by bonds of trust, but the conventional wisdom regarding the relation between trust and organised crime lacks a comprehensive theoretical and empirical underpinning. The purpose of this paper is to explore where deeper research on this issue may lead and how it can potentially contribute to a better understanding of organised crime in general. Drawing on the general sociological literature, it provides a preliminary conceptualisation of trust in the context of organised crime centred around a fourfold typology along the micro-macro dimension. The authors use anecdotal evidence from their research on illegal markets for highly taxed goods in Norway and Germany to illustrate that there are different types of trust, that there are different consequences of the violation of trust, and, finally, that there are criminal relations not based on trust at all.

Suggested Citation

  • Klaus von Lampe & Per Ole Johansen, 2004. "Organized Crime and Trust: On the conceptualization and empirical relevance of trust in the context of criminal networks," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 159-184, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:fglcxx:v:6:y:2004:i:2:p:159-184
    DOI: 10.1080/17440570500096734
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17440570500096734
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17440570500096734?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Varese, Federico, 2001. "The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198297369.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ancuţa Elena FRANŢ, 2020. "Understanding The Individuals Who Are A Part Of Transnational Organised Crime - A Key Factor For Creating A Successful Policy To Fight Against This Kind Of Criminality," EURINT, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 7, pages 101-115.
    2. C. Bravard & J. Durieu & J. Kamphorst & S. Roché & S. Sémirat, 2023. "Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(6), pages 1361-1393, December.
    3. Bright, David & Whelan, Chad & Jones, Callum & Edson-Wilkinson, Kelly, 2025. "The utility of social network analysis to examine conflict and collaboration across boundaries: A review and research agenda for Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Beckert, Jens & Wehinger, Frank, 2011. "In the shadow illegal markets and economic sociology," MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/9, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    5. Maria Bigoni & Sven-Olof Fridolfsson & Chloé Le Coq & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2015. "Trust, Leniency, and Deterrence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 663-689.
    6. Alice Airola & Martin Bouchard, 2020. "The Social Network Consequences of a Gang Murder Blowout," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-15, November.
    7. Spagnolo, Giancarlo & Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Le Coq, Chloé & Bigoni, Maria, 2012. "Trust and Deterrence," CEPR Discussion Papers 9002, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Engwicht, Nina, 2016. "Illegale Märkte in Postkonfliktgesellschaften: Der sierra-leonische Diamantenmarkt," Schriften aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, volume 88, number 88.
    9. Paolo Campana & Federico Varese, 2013. "Cooperation in criminal organizations: Kinship and violence as credible commitments," Rationality and Society, , vol. 25(3), pages 263-289, August.
    10. van Deuren, Sjoukje & Diviák, Tomáš & Blokland, Arjan, 2025. "Co-offending among outlaw motorcycle gang members: The role of social and geographical proximity," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    11. D'Alessio, Stewart J. & Stolzenberg, Lisa, 2010. "Do cities influence co-offending?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 711-719, July.
    12. Xie He & Amir Ghasemian & Eun Lee & Alice C Schwarze & Aaron Clauset & Peter J Mucha, 2024. "Link prediction accuracy on real-world networks under non-uniform missing-edge patterns," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(7), pages 1-17, July.
    13. Ivan D. Lobo & Maria Alejandra VÔøΩlez, 2020. "From strong leadership to active community engagement: effective resistance to illicit economies in Afro Colombian collective territories," Documentos CEDE 17908, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierfrancesco Rolla & Patricia Justino, 2022. "The social consequences of organized crime in Italy," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-106, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Bo Rothstein, 2011. "Can markets be expected to prevent themselves from self‐destruction?," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 387-404, December.
    3. Giuseppe De Feo & Giacomo Davide De Luca, 2017. "Mafia in the Ballot Box," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 134-167, August.
    4. Ethan Bueno De Mesquita & Catherine Hafer, 2008. "Public Protection Or Private Extortion?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 1-32, March.
    5. Corinna Elsenbroich & Jennifer Badham, 2016. "The Extortion Relationship: A Computational Analysis," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 19(4), pages 1-8.
    6. David Skarbek & Peng Wang, 2015. "Criminal rituals," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 288-305, October.
    7. Kevin Lewis O’Neill, 2021. "Terminal velocity: The speed of extortion in Guatemala City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(5), pages 977-991, August.
    8. Paolo Campana. Andrea Giovannetti & Paolo Pin & Roberto Rozzi, 2025. "Criminal Property Rights Suppress Violence in Urban Drug Markets: Theory and Evidence from Merseyside, U.K," Papers 2508.02561, arXiv.org.
    9. David Skarbek, 2024. "The political economy of criminal governance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 200(1), pages 1-24, July.
    10. Astarita, Caterina & Capuano, Carlo & Purificato, Francesco, 2018. "The macroeconomic impact of organised crime: A post-Keynesian analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 514-528.
    11. Lonsky, Jakub, 2020. "Gulags, Crime, and Elite Violence: Origins and Consequences of the Russian Mafia," GLO Discussion Paper Series 711, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    12. Karla Hoff & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2008. "Exiting a Lawless State," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1474-1497, August.
    13. Olaf J. de Groot & Matthew D. Rablen & Anja Shortland, 2011. "Gov-aargh-nance: "Even Criminals Need Law and Order"," Economics of Security Working Paper Series 46, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Ichiro Iwasaki & Yuko Adachi, 2024. "Legal Weakness, Investment Risks, and Distressed Acquisitions: Evidence from Russian Regions," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 66(1), pages 1-69, March.
    15. Peter J. Boettke & Rosolino A. Candela, 2020. "Productive specialization, peaceful cooperation and the problem of the predatory state: lessons from comparative historical political economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(3), pages 331-352, March.
    16. Serguey Braguinsky & Roger Myerson, 2007. "A macroeconomic model of Russian transition," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 15(1), pages 77-107, January.
    17. Natalia Vasilenok, 2018. "What Drives the Private Provision of Security: Evidence from Russian Regions," HSE Working papers WP BRP 197/EC/2018, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    18. Michele Battisti & Andrea Mario Lavezzi & Lucio Masserini & Monica Pratesi, 2018. "Resisting the extortion racket: an empirical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 1-37, August.
    19. Gustafsson Kurki, Pär, 2025. "Corruption and Commercial Courts in Russia: A reply to Kathryn Hendley and Peter Murrell (2014)," SocArXiv juq7g_v1, Center for Open Science.
    20. Louis-Alexandre Berg & Marlon Carranza, 2018. "Organized criminal violence and territorial control," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 55(5), pages 566-581, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:fglcxx:v:6:y:2004:i:2:p:159-184. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FGLC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.