Organized Crime Without Organizations: How Human Trafficking Reveals a New Criminal Landscape

Oguzhan O. Demir, PhD
oguzhan.demir@gc4ss.org

Senior Expert
Global Center for Security Studies

When we think about organized crime, often we imagine powerful criminal organizations led by influential figures in strict hierarchies and involved in extensive illegal enterprises. This image has shaped public perceptions, academic discussions, and law enforcement strategies for decades. Criminal activities have nevertheless dramatically changed. The following is mainly derived from a recent publication on Social Sciences [*], in which Dr. Mahmut Cengiz and I discussed how hoteliers acted in the form of organized crime in human trafficking.

Organized Crime Beyond the Mafia Model

Human trafficking is frequently presented as a mafia-style illegal enterprise with a tight hierarchy and links to other forms of crime and criminal networks. International and national governments, as well as nonprofit organizations, emphasize the organized criminal dimension of human trafficking. However, there may also be misconceptions about the true nature of organized crime [1].

The literature identifies different forms of criminal organization. Schloenhardt [2], for example, distinguishes between the corporate and network models. The corporate model refers to a centralized, hierarchical, and bureaucratic framework in which activities are managed and directed by a boss. The network model, on the other hand, is organized horizontally. Its participants are relatively self-sufficient and adaptable, allowing them to respond to requests or law enforcement activity.

Finckenauer [3] makes a related distinction between “organized crime” and “crime that is organized.” The former is highly structured and sophisticated, stable over time, and characterized by restricted membership, organizational identity, and a reputation for violence. The latter involves people who band together to pursue a specific, usually single, illegal opportunity. Participants exchange their specialties to address requirements or problems that individual members cannot overcome on their own. Such cooperation is often opportunistic.

This distinction is particularly relevant to human trafficking. Many people who arrange, accompany, and direct potential victims do not necessarily qualify as members of conventional organized crime organizations. Their activities may involve ad hoc structures and a division of work without the ties and characteristics of typical criminal organizations [4]. In other words, organized criminal activity does not always require a permanent organization or a recognizable hierarchy.

Human Trafficking as a Networked Enterprise

Human trafficking networks involve coordinated activities among several people who may participate in both legitimate and criminal activities. Their partnerships can continue until a particular operation or mission is completed [5]. Legitimate partners may also play a vital role. Even when they are not directly involved in operational activities, their contributions to smuggling and trafficking networks can be critical [6].

Some private-sector businesses, including travel and marriage agencies, can support trafficking groups while operating as legitimate enterprises [7]. Similarly, sex trafficking businesses may evade law enforcement detection by appearing to operate legitimately [8]. These relationships demonstrate how criminal activities can rely on individuals and businesses that do not necessarily identify themselves as part of a criminal organization.

Shelley [9] argues that human trafficking organizations have successfully combined features of illegal businesses with procedures used by successful multinational corporations. She suggests that the trafficking industry cannot be explained through a single organizational model. Her six models illustrate the different ways trafficking operations are organized across cultural and geographical contexts.

These models include Chinese trafficking operations in which trafficked men are forced to repay debts through labor; the transportation and sale of women and girls from post-Soviet countries through middlemen and trading partners; and Balkan criminal organizations that recruit women from post-conflict areas and transfer them to partners in Western Europe. Other models include loosely connected networks operating in the United States, trafficking groups along the US–Mexico border, and Nigerian networks in Italy in which former victims become recruiters.

Although these models differ in their structures and methods, they demonstrate that trafficking operations can involve different participants, specialized responsibilities, and business-like arrangements. The organizational structure may be centralized in some cases and relatively loose in others. Therefore, the absence of a conventional hierarchy should not be interpreted as the absence of organization.

The Organization of Exploitation

Human trafficking involves several stages, including recruitment, transportation, control, and exploitation [10]. Each stage may involve different individuals and methods, making coordination among participants an important feature of trafficking operations.

Recruitment often takes place through intimate acquaintances, including boyfriends and girlfriends, family members, and neighbors. Female recruiters may be particularly persuasive. Traffickers also use alluring employment advertisements, promises of travel, and fraudulent marriage proposals to attract potential victims [11]. Social media has become another recruitment instrument. The UNODC identifies two strategies: “hunting,” in which traffickers proactively search for types of victims, and “fishing,” in which they attract potential victims [10]. The share of social media among internet-based recruitment tools increased from 32 percent in 2009–2011 to 52 percent in 2015–2018.

After recruitment, victims are transported to the locations where exploitation takes place. Recruiters or intermediaries may accompany them, while traffickers cover travel expenses, including passports and tickets. When border restrictions create difficulties, traffickers may enlist smugglers or corrupt border authorities to facilitate crossings [12, 9]. These activities illustrate how trafficking operations can depend on different actors who provide services at different stages.

Control and exploitation are maintained through methods such as debt bondage, confinement, and confiscation of travel documents [13]. Expenses initially covered by traffickers, including travel, clothing, and accommodation, are added to victims’ debts. These debts may continue to increase, extending the period of exploitation and making repayment impossible. Traffickers also use verbal threats, violence, threats of police intervention or deportation, threats against victims’ families, sexual abuse, and rape [12].

The organization of trafficking, therefore, is not limited to the recruitment or transportation of victims. It also involves the coordination of different methods of control and exploitation. Individuals may perform distinct tasks while contributing to the continuation of the same criminal activity.

Corruption and Financial Networks

Corruption is an important instrument in the operation of trafficking networks. According to the OECD [7], corruption benefits traffickers by making their activities invisible, facilitating impunity, enabling the execution of criminal operations, and contributing to the re-victimization of trafficked persons.

Corrupt officials may facilitate border crossings, provide forged passports and visas, share information about law enforcement operations, or ignore complaints against traffickers. Connections with law enforcement and judicial authorities can help traffickers avoid investigation and prosecution. Relationships with bank personnel may also facilitate money laundering. Private-sector actors, including employment, travel, and marriage services, can provide additional support for trafficking operations [14, 7].

Financial arrangements are another important component. Human trafficking generates diverse financial flows, and the proceeds are realized differently across countries and types of exploitation [15]. Traffickers may use cash transactions, alternative payment mechanisms, and systems such as hawala. Front companies can also make criminal proceeds appear to originate from legitimate businesses. These arrangements complicate the identification and investigation of trafficking-related financial activity [15, 16].

Taken together, corruption and financial networks demonstrate that trafficking operations may extend beyond the individuals who directly recruit or exploit victims. Their activities can depend on relationships with public officials, private businesses, and financial intermediaries. These connections help sustain criminal operations while making their organizational structures more difficult to identify.

Rethinking Organized Crime

The literature on human trafficking presents different organizational arrangements, ranging from centralized criminal structures to flexible and temporary networks. It also demonstrates the importance of legitimate businesses, intermediaries, corrupt officials, and financial arrangements in sustaining trafficking operations.

The distinction between organized crime and crime that is organized draws attention to criminal activities that may be coordinated and sophisticated without displaying the characteristics of a mafia-like organization. Human trafficking makes this distinction particularly visible: different actors can perform separate tasks while establishing temporary partnerships and using legitimate economic and institutional relationships.

All in all, organized crime does not always have to look like an organization to be organized. Thinking in the context of human trafficking requires looking beyond conventional hierarchies and examining the networks, relationships, and arrangements through which criminal activities are carried out. We need to look beyond the classical image of the mafia and examine the networks and relationships with legitimate structures.

(*) Cengiz, Mahmut, and Oguzhan Omer Demir. 2022. “How Hoteliers Act in the Form of Organized Crime in Human Trafficking: A Case Study from Turkey.” Social Sciences 11: 511. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11110511

References

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2. Schloenhardt, Andreas. 1999. Organized Crime and the Business of Migrant Trafficking: An Economic Analysis. Canberra: AIC Occasional Seminar, November 10.
3. Finckenauer, James O. 2007. Mafia and Organized Crime: The Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
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10. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 2020. Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. Vienna: UNODC.
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12. Demir, Oguzhan O. 2010. “Methods of Sex Trafficking: Findings of a Case Study in Turkey.” Global Crime 11: 314–35.
13. Cengiz, Mahmut, and Mitchel P. Roth. 2019. The Illicit Economy in Turkey: How Criminals, Terrorists, and the Syrian Conflict Fuel Underground Markets. Lanham: Lexington Books.
14. Fouladvand, Shahrzad. 2019. “Corruption and Human Trafficking.” In Corruption in the Global Era: Causes, Sources and Forms of Manifestation, edited by Lorenzo Pasculli and Nicholas Ryder, 289–305. New York: Routledge.
15. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF-APG). 2018. Financial Flows from Human Trafficking. Paris: FATF.
16. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF). 2022. ML/TF Risks Arising from Migrant Smuggling. Paris: FATF.