Exploring interrelationships between high-level drug trafficking and other serious and organised crime: an Australian study

Drug trafficking is frequently argued to be the leading driver of other serious and organised crime, but the interrelationships between such activities remain poorly understood. This paper uses open source law enforcement data to explore interrelationships in Australia. A database was compiled of all reported criminal incidents of high-level drug trafficking between 2011 and 2017 and any concurrent charges for other serious and organised crime (SOC), sourced from official reports and press releases of Australian federal law enforcement and criminal intelligence agencies. Over the seven-years period 24.4% drug trafficking cases involved concurrent SOC charges. Logistic regressions showed characteristics associated with any concurrent SOC charge included the type of drug trafficked, network size, network nationality and OMCG ties. But characteristics differed according to which SOC was cited in connection with the drug trafficking offence e.g. firearms offences versus corruption/fraud. We discuss the implications for research, policy and practice.