It has been a while since I recommended the book GOMORRAH, by Roberto
Saviano. It describes organized crime networks in Italy and across Europe
and is one of the keys (IMO) to understanding what is happening in Mexico
and Central America also.  Highly recommended:
http://www.amazon.com/Gomorrah-Personal-Journey-International-Organiz...

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/04/23/crime-ranks-as-one-of-wo...

Crime ranks as one of world’s ‘top 20 economies’, UN official says

Reuters <http://business.financialpost.com/author/reutersnp/>  Apr 23, 2012
– 8:52 PM ET
[image: REUTERS/U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Handout]

REUTERS/U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Handout

Up to US$40-billion is lost through corruption in developing countries
annually and illicit income from human trafficking amounts to US$32-billion
every year, a UN official said on Monday.

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Crime generates an estimated US$2.1-trillion in global annual proceeds – or
3.6% of the world’s gross domestic product – and the problem may be
growing, a senior United Nations official said on Monday.

“It makes the criminal business one of the largest economies in the world,
one of the top 20 economies,” said Yury Fedotov, head of the U.N. Office on
Drugs and Crime <http://www.unodc.org/>(UNODC), describing it as a threat
to security and economic development.

The figure was calculated recently for the first time by the UNODC and
World Bank, based on data for 2009, and no comparisons are yet available,
Fedotov told a news conference.

Speaking on the opening day of a week-long meeting of the international Commission
on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice<http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/commissions/CCPCJ/> (CCPCJ),
he suggested the situation may be worsening “but to corroborate this
feeling I need more data”.

He said up to US$40-billion is lost through corruption in developing
countries annually and illicit income from human trafficking amounts to
US$32-billion every year.

“According to some estimates, at any one time, 2.4 million people suffer
the misery of human trafficking, a shameful crime of modern day slavery,”
Fedotov said separately in a speech.

He also cited a range of other crimes yielding big money.

Organized crime, illicit trafficking, violence and corruption are “major
impediments” to the Millennium Development Goals, a group of targets set by
the international community in 2000 to seek to improve health and reduce
poverty among the world’s poorest people by 2015, Fedotov said.

Criminal groups have shown “impressive adaptability” to law enforcement
actions and to new profit opportunities, a senior U.S. official told the
meeting in Vienna.

“Today, most criminal organizations bear no resemblance to the hierarchical
organized crime family groups of the past,” Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary Brian Nichols said, according to a copy of his speech.

“Instead, they consist of loose and informal networks that often converge
when it is convenient and engage in a diverse array of criminal
activities,” Nichols, of the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs, added.

He said terrorist groups in some cases were turning to crime to help fund
their operations: “There are even instances where terrorists are evolving
into criminal entrepreneurs in their own right.”

© Thomson Reuters 2012

I'll second Molly's recommendation, and also remind people that there is a
movie based on the book. Also, a couple of years ago I did a little
comparison looking at the rates of violence attributed to the Italian
N'Drangheta and the violence in Mexico. There is a link to my analysis
at http://www.scribd.com/doc/15633731/Gomorra-versus-Mexican-Cartels-Is-...