Corruption as the cause, not the effect, of organized crime?

Abstract

This analysis uses known corruption cases, serious enough to be prosecuted by governments, to develop an empirical description of the nature of corruption and its connections to organized crime. More than 200 cases from the U.S. covering an entire year are compared with nearly 300 corruption cases submitted by Member States of the United Nations to its electronic resources portal (SHERLOC). SHERLOC makes available resources from all 193 UN Member States, non-member observer States of the United Nations, the European Union, and non-member parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The SHERLOC cases come from 50 countries, representing more than a quarter of the nations in the world. The objective of this analysis is to examine similarities and differences in corrupt conduct, its purpose or motivation, the number of offenders involved, transnational involvement, and organized crime connections. The circumstances of these cases suggest that corruption works as an enabler or facilitator of multiple forms of organized crime, rather than the effect.