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This book explains the existence of illicit markets throughout human history and provides recommendations to governments. Organized criminal networks increased in strength after the enforcement of prohibition, eventually challenging the authority of the state and its institutions through corruption and violence. Criminal networks now organize under cyber-infrastructure, what we call the Deep or Dark Web. The authors analyze how illicit markets come together, issues of destabilization and international security, the effect of legitimate enterprises crowded out of developing countries, and ultimately, illicit markets' cost to human life. Hanna Samir Kassab is Visiting Assistant Professor at Northern Michigan University, USA. Jonathan D. Rosen is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Holy Family University, USA.

The basic purpose of supply reduction efforts is to influence the relative cost and availability of abuse-able drugs. In designing supply reduction efforts, one must decide which drugs produce the greatest social problems, and how the supply of each drug can be most effectively reduced. A review of the current situation suggests that supply reduction efforts should be shifted to concentrate more on heroin, barbiturates, and amphetamines. Unfortunately, analysis reveals that effective control of these different drugs requires remarkably diverse organizational capabilities. The control of heroin depends on a capacity to make conspiracy cases against international dealers. The control of barbiturates depends on an increased capacity to prevent diversion from legitimate domestic distribution. And the control of amphetamines requires effective action against small scale illegal importation from Mexico, diversion from domestic distribution, and illegal domestic production. To handle these diverse problems, DEA must be given time to develop and deploy a variety of professional capabilities besides undercover agents.

Since Charles Tilly made the comparison between state making and organized crime, it has often been assumed that illicit markets necessarily contain parallel, coercive governance structures: mafias. I argue that some illicit markets have mafias while others do not, and identify as the source of this variation the costliness of the use of force and the imperatives of territorial control. When the use of force is too costly and there is no need to control territory to conduct business, illicit entrepreneurs will not invest in the development of mafias or use violence to protect their property. I evaluate theories of both organized crime and new institutional economics to explain the relationship between the authority structures of the state and the authority structures of illicit markets. Because mafias and their use of violence can undermine state sovereignty and public order, understanding the origins of violent mafias can inform policy choices.

Research on small businesses facilitating illicit markets and the efforts of nonfederal law enforcement agencies to identify these small business offenders has been scant. This exploratory study examines the illicit market for counterfeit products sold through small businesses in the State of Michigan. We used police incident reports of counterfeit products identified during administrative tobacco inspections of small businesses to provide a unique look at this crime problem and the efforts of law enforcement to curtail it. We analyzed the content of these incident reports to explore characteristics of the incidents, businesses and suspects selling counterfeit products, how the counterfeit products were identified and verified, and the origin of the counterfeits. Implications for law enforcement efforts to address counterfeit criminal enterprises and directions for future research are discussed.

Illicit market exchanges in cybercriminal markets are plagued by problems of verifiability and enforceability: trust is one way to ensure reliable exchange. It is fragile and hard to establish. One way to do that is to use the administrative structure of the digital market to control transactions. This is common among a specific type of market – darknet cryptomarkets. These are sites for the sale of illicit goods and services, hosted anonymously using the Tor darknet. However, reliance by users on the technology and the market administrators exposes users to excessive risk. We examine a case of a market that rejects several key technological features now common in cryptomarkets but that is nonetheless reliable and robust. We apply a techno-social approach that looks at the way participants use and combine technologies with trust relationships. The study was designed to capture the interactional context of the illicit market. We aimed to examine both person-to-person interaction and the technical infrastructure the market relied on. We find that the social space of the market maintains itself through a shared common security orientation, community participation in key decisions about products sold, performing trust signalling, and relying on lateral trust between members. There are implications for how resilience in cryptomarkets is understood.