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TraCCC's Spring Speaker Series
TraCCC's Spring Speaker Series features presentations by experts on several topics of pressing concern in the fields of transnational crime and terrorism studies.
2007 2006
Spring Speaker Series 2007
On 10 April 2007, Professor Jan Van Dijk, Pieter van Vollenhoven professor
in victimology and human security at Tilburg University, The Netherlands,
and former officer in charge of the United Nations Crime Prevention Centre
in Vienna, spoke at TraCCC about his work on international crime.
Professor van Dijk specifically discussed his work on Mafia Markers,
which will be published as World of Crime: Breaking the Silence on Problems of Crime, Justice and Development in 2007 by SAGE Publishers. These markers are presented as the quantified
and correlated
relationships between various indices of organized crime, police
performance, rule of law, and corruption. By drawing correlations
among these variables,
Professor van Dijk puts the measurement of organized crime on a
comparative global basis, enabling researchers to more rigorously
theorize the causes
and effects of this form of criminal behavior. The most significant
(statistically) correlations were between measures of both corruption
and the rule of law
(World Bank data) and the professor’s own index of organized crime.
Lastly, the professor offered a critique of how organized crime has been “neglected
by the development community” and correlates his organized crime index
and GDP per capita to show the significant negative correlation
between organized crime and wealth. He argues that it is impossible
to have sustainable
development without strong institutions, especially those relating
to corruption and rule of law, and presents Afghanistan as a case
where present-day economic
growth (due to Opium production) is unsustainable due to its effect
on institutions in that country.
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Spring Speaker Series 2006
On 19 April 2006, Dr. Vladimir Papava's discussed his book
Necroeconomics: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Capitalism.
On 4 April 2006, Dr Jay
Albanese of the National Institute of Justice discussed researching
the crime-terror nexus.
On 1 March 2006,
Dr. Marc Sageman, author of Understanding Terror Networks, joined American University's School of International Service Assistant Professor Patrick Jackson and TraCCC Director Professor Louise
Shelley to discuss the social network organization of crime and terror
groups. The event was summarized in an article in the American Weekly.
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