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Economic Crisis Triggers Global Crime Wave

Crisis gives globalized crime gangs opportunity to flourish

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 7, 2009 8:35 AM CDT

(Newser) – The global economic crisis has been a massive stimulus package for violent crime worldwide, Michael Klare writes in Salon. Crime syndicates are finding it easy to recruit from the growing ranks of the unemployed and desperate, the professor writes, and their increasing power is weakening the governments of "narco-states" from Latin America to Africa.

The spike in piracy on the high seas is one symptom of the crime epidemic, Klare writes, as is a steep rise in executions in China. China's economy is in far better shape than places like Guinea-Bissau, Klare notes, but mass layoffs there appear to be fueling a rise in crime and consequent state repression—a process likely to be repeated in many other places without urgent action to help the world's destitute.

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A farmer carries his son in a coca field in Ayacucho, Peru. Villagers are facing a resurgent Shining Path movement, believed to be boosting its power by working with drug traffickers. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

Chinese police escort convicted criminal gang members for execution in central China. China rarely releases crime statistics, but a recent rise in executions indicates growing crime and unrest. (Getty Images)

This photo supplied by the US Navy shows suspected pirates with their hands in the air as a team from the USS Vella Gulf as the team prepares to apprehend them in the Gulf of Aden. (AP Photo/ U.S. Navy,Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason R. Zalasky)

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Without a global stimulus effort aimed at those at greatest risk of destitution, hunger and homelessness, expect an epidemic of global crime and boom times for criminal syndicates and cartels everywhere. - Professor Michael T. Klare

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Economic Crisis Triggers Global Crime Wave