The featured collection is grounded in these principles: to present public security professionals and criminal justice practitioners with new security perspectives in a transnational context.
The featured collection is grounded in these principles: to present public security professionals and criminal justice practitioners with new security perspectives in a transnational context.
Police Commissioner in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Instructor at the Civil Police Academy (ACADEPOL).
Master in International Relations. Researcher of international police cooperation practices, especially regarding the day-to-day work of law enforcement agencies.
The global integrations of recent decades have brought new challenges to law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice system. New technologies—such as communication methods, systems for transferring goods and financial assets, and the facilitation of international travel—have turned borders into mere formalities for criminal activity. In the words of the United Nations, “crime is becoming increasingly transnational, organized and complex, and criminals are increasingly exploiting new and emerging technologies, including the internet, to carry out their illicit activities” (UN, 2021).
The expansion of criminal activity beyond national borders is not new. However, we are living in a historical moment in which illicit chains unfold across continents, crossing oceans in seconds with a single click. “Business-like” criminal associations extend internationally like a growing multinational corporation, connecting with a wide range of actors and with other illicit “companies” around the world, exploiting local and global markets for the distribution of their products and services.
These “commodities,” as we know, take multiple forms: drug trafficking, human trafficking, illicit arms markets, counterfeit goods, art smuggling, cybercrime, child sexual exploitation, corruption of public officials, wildlife trafficking, environmental crimes, and money laundering. These are only a few examples of the broad spectrum of activities that constitute illicit markets—and, likewise, of the complex challenges they pose to law enforcement agencies.
In the Americas, this scenario is especially challenging. Over the past decades, criminal organizations have expanded both domestically and internationally, communicating with organized groups in other countries and aggressively exploiting the illicit markets associated with their operations. The Organization of American States (OAS) has recognized that countries in the region face
common security threats as well as new threats, concerns and other challenges that, because of their complex and multidimensional nature, determine that security has a multidimensional character”
(OAS, 2003).
This multidimensional character therefore requires law enforcement personnel and the criminal justice system to adopt a new perspective on crime in the region. “Traditional” threats now coexist with new security concerns involving public security, environmental protection, human rights, information technology, migration control, and democracy, alongside local, national, and regional policies aimed at addressing them.
In this regard, such policies become particularly sensitive when we consider border regions. In Brazil—one of the countries with the largest land borders in the world—“it is impossible to understand the consolidation of illegal markets and the structuring of criminal activities in major urban centers without taking into account the complex arrangement of political, economic, social, cultural and criminal dynamics present in
the 588 municipalities spread across the nearly 17,000 kilometers of borders that Brazil shares with ten other South American countries”
(MISSE; ZILLI; HIRATA; RENOLDI, 2016)
It is therefore impossible to speak of “public security” without addressing the impact of border realities in the Americas, whose effects are felt around the world.
Thus, the public security professional must be attentive not only to changes within criminal chains, but also to those that affect police work itself. Just as globalization transforms organized crime and the illicit markets in which it operates, policing activities are also affected by new technologies and by the physical and virtual proximities that globalization enables (BOWLING, 2009). We are increasingly connected to foreign police officers—whether colleagues working in cross-border metropolitan regions or those located many time zones away. As noted, “in the performance of their duties, police officers interact directly with their foreign counterparts, especially when such actions involve the investigation of crimes with transnational repercussions or whose investigative needs surpass the political borders of States” (SCANDOLARA, 2022). After all,
the common perception that a police officer is a police officer, regardless of the badge worn, and a criminal is a criminal, regardless of where the crime was committed, serves as a kind of transnational value system".
(ANDREAS; NADELMANN, 2006).
The collection presented here is grounded in these principles: to offer public security professionals and the criminal justice community new security perspectives within a transnational context. Criminal organizations, illicit markets, public security in border regions, and multidimensional security are the central themes of this collection. Additionally, national and international legal frameworks related to these topics are introduced, always with attention to the specificities of police work. We wish all readers an excellent and enriching experience.
