This introduction presents a novel framework that distinguishes three activities of organized crime (OC): production (creating goods and services), trade (moving products and people), and governance (regulating markets and controlling communities). These activities require different skills and give rise to three different types of OC groups. To illustrate some of the points, I make references to the papers published in this Special Issue, on erotic fiction in China by Wang and Evelyn; on falsified medicines production and trade between Asia and Europe by Hamill; on drugs retail and gang control of a neighbourhood in Marseilles by Rodgers and Jensen; and the cocaine international distribution chain by Feltran.

Marseille is a city that has long been sensationalistically associated in the public imagination with crime and drug dealing. This article begins by tracing the history of drug dealing and gang violence in the city, from its 19th century origins to the rise of what has been called the “French Connection” in the 1960s and 1970s, when Marseille played a central role in the global heroin trade. The city’s criminality subsequently became more local in scope in the 1980s and 1990s, and the second part of the article draws on recent research carried out in the Marseille cité of Félix-Pyat, a poor neighbourhood widely associated with gang violence and drug dealing, to explore the consequences of the changing nature of crime in the city for process of “criminal governance”. When considered historically and in relation to our previous research on gangs in Nicaragua and South Africa, we suggest that it might be appropriate to talk about there being “varieties” of criminal governance that come together as “assemblages” than can be constituted in fundamentally different ways.

Since 2016, global police data have revealed a significant rise in cocaine production in Latin America, as well as an improvement in the drug’s purity, together with more frequent seizures in Europe and sharply increased consumption in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. This article argues that these changes have been driven by an understudied platformization of global cocaine logistics. This article examines the governance mechanisms of this changing trade. It consists of three parts. The first examines the governance structure of an emerging criminal player, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (“First Capital Command” (PCC)). The second introduces the Agência, a PCC regulatory body that manages drug trafficking via a platform model. The third and final part investigates criminal efforts to establish a global, multimodal logistics system; it demonstrates how the cocaine market has become integrated into formal economies and why it challenges existing power structures. The analysis draws on extensive fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2025, including interviews with former drug traffickers, law enforcement officers, and customs officials, as well as quantitative and documentary data on seizures, purity, and violence related to cocaine trafficking.

Risks and disputes are prevalent in the illegal online erotic fiction market due to the absence of state protection and enforcement, the lack of accepted criteria for evaluating product quality, the customisation of services, and widespread plagiarism. Drawing on insights from the sociological literature on signalling theory and Varese’s production–trade–governance framework, this article empirically investigates the strategies developed by author-sellers in this market to signal their trustworthiness to customers and resolve disputes. Agents and author-sellers send multiple signals to persuade potential buyers of their trustworthiness and ability, including by sharing writing samples created for previous clients, sharing their collective writing projects, disclosing past transaction records, and being selective about which orders to accept. Agents and author-sellers also offer multiple options for dispute resolution during the sales process, leverage information asymmetry to resolve disputes caused by delivery delays, and utilise neutralisation techniques to address disputes stemming from plagiarism. This research expands the literature on signalling theory, and its findings will hopefully inspire future studies of other illegal online markets.

This article investigates the organization of a transnational criminal enterprise through a detailed case study of Operation Singapore, a network producing and trafficking falsified pharmaceuticals from China to the United Kingdom. Drawing on law enforcement records, court transcripts, digital communications, and expert interviews, the study maps the structure and strategies of this criminal enterprise. It applies Peter Reuter’s theory of criminal organization, and Niles Breuer and Federico Varese’s typology of network forms to show how functional roles shape organizational structure: production was hierarchical and security-driven, while distribution was decentralized and transactional. Trust was not based on kinship or ethnicity but constructed through moral appeals and restricted information flows. The case reveals how criminal actors exploit legal frameworks and commercial infrastructures to mask illegal activity and blur boundaries between legal and illegal markets. These findings challenge static models of organized crime and call for a more dynamic, relational understanding of criminal enterprise.