The Organized Crime Index: A tool for strategy and measuring impact

In 2021, The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime introduced the Global Organized Crime Index, with an updated version released in 2023. This tool is designed to assess the levels and nature of organized crime and the strength of countries’ resilience to address the criminal threats they face.

Crucially, as the multiple iterations of the Index have developed, it has become possible to compare longitudinal data on criminality and resilience patterns for all 193 UN member States.

Due to this, the Index also offers a potential benefit to states seeking to assess the impact of sanctions on organized crime, by tracking oscillations in the intensity and scope of key illicit markets. In this, the Index fits with evolving strategic recommendations by the Global Initiative’s Focused Research Initiative on sanctions that such tools be employed with an eye towards strategically disrupting and shaping markets.

In this webinar, moderated by Ana Paula Oliveira, Matt Herbert and Laura Adal will discuss the intersection of the Global Initiative’s Global Organized Crime Index and its focused research initiative on sanctions. The discussion will focus on how the index can be leveraged as a tool for designing, analysing and assessing the use of sanctions to target transnational organized crime.