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This chapter traces the history of global crime governance from the final decades of the nineteenth century to today, with particular attention paid to the United Nations and its crime programme after World War II. It highlights significant changes to the structure and mandate of the UN crime programme over the last 70 years and how UN agencies have helped shape the international crime policy agenda and its focus on development. The chapter then illustrates how vestiges of prevailing beliefs about development and crime and the global political economy that gave rise to them continue to influence the work of the UN system and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) today. In this regard, our analysis highlights some institutional and structural challenges inherent to containing the ‘dark side of globalisation’ together with the ways in which the UN's efforts to do so privilege the interests and understandings of Northern countries. We conclude that these power asymmetries represent an obstacle to the UN's custodianship of criminological targets that feature in the SDGs, but stop short of suggesting that the governance of the crime–development nexus should be viewed as a coherent, neo-colonial project given the institutional weaknesses within the UN system, the ‘Rise of the South’ and the potential for civil society to contest its priorities and agendas.

This chapter introduces the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and considers how criminological research, policy and practice can advance this global agenda. It critically accounts for the complex geopolitical, institutional and ideological landscapes that gave rise to this agenda and the challenges this poses for implementing the SDGs today. The chapter also raises important questions about the viability and consequentiality of global efforts to govern the nexus between crime, justice and sustainable development on account of the gravest threat to humanity, climate change. We conclude that all of these issues highlight the need for scholars and practitioners with expertise on crime and justice to approach this agenda from a critical standpoint. At the same time, we acknowledge that the SDGs remain the best global framework that we have for promoting safer and more equitable societies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the treats hindering war against illicit financial flows of organised crime in developing economies and Nigeria in particular. The examination shows that the impediments facing the fight against money laundering and organised crime financial flows vary from one country to another. It may be lesser in developed economies where most instruments, treaties and best practice recommendations to curb serious crime originated from. However, the impediments against the proceeds of organised crime in developing economies are overwhelming.

The research methodology adopted was qualitative analysis. This was applied through the use and analysis of documents and expert interviews.

The impediments jeopardising the success against organised crime and other related serious crime financial flows in developing economies are devastating. Consequently, the study offered some policy implications to help mitigate these impediments in developing countries. The dynamics and the phenomena of organised crime business model are operated with ingenious strategies within the global states. Therefore, staying in control of the menace and the threats originated from the organised criminal activities would require periodic review of the global initiatives, standards and strategies deployed by the standard setters to combat organised crime and its financial flows in developing and evolving economies. Additionally, the implementing countries should be carried along and allow to make inputs when such initiatives and standards are being developed.

In Nigeria, there is a clear evidence of “collateral damage” in terms of social justice as result of financial exclusion of many bankable adults of the country that do not possess unique identities for account opening documentation and customer due diligence of the Financial Action Task Force recommendation 10.

There have been quite a number of studies on organised crime and still fewer have recognised the need to explore the success or failure of combating the proceeds of crime in developing economies. This study provides answer to these gaps by screening associated risks of fighting the proceeds of organised crime in developing countries and Nigeria in particular.

Economists have observed that during the last several decades of the twentieth century there have been more examples of national economic success than failure. One leading explanation for this is that socio‐economic evolution has resulted in improved institutions and institutional arrangements. Globalization during the second half of the twentieth century spread capitalist institutions and liberal politics around the world. This paper examines the fundamental forces underlying these socioeconomic processes. If the boundaries of these forces are on the global rather than national level, the issue of a global government naturally arises. The relationship between the forces of socio‐economic evolution, sustainable globalization and global governance are explored. An index of global government is presented to monitor these phenomena over time.

Money laundering (ML) has become a global threat in recent years, impacting both developed and poor countries. Developing an efficient anti-money laundering (AML) regime is a difficult and time-consuming process owing to the ever-changing spectrum of methods used, weaknesses in control mechanisms, intricacies of laws and regulations, organizational malfunction and goal displacement. In Bangladesh, surge of illegal money, rising money heists and egregious capital outflows have posed a governance problem. The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensions of ML and examine the structure and performance of the AML regime.

This study adopts a qualitative method, based on a thorough review of the conceptual and empirical literature on ML, content analysis of a range of publications, a scan of newspaper articles and digital resources and responses/comments of current and retired government employees in Bangladesh. The evaluation is informed by the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force and supported by the mutual evaluation reports of the AGroup on Money Laundering.

Bangladesh, like most of South Asia, is highly vulnerable to ML and is hard-pressed to fully comply with global standards for control. Weak institutions, bureaucratic pathology, lack of transparency and accountability, high levels of corruption, an ambiguous regulatory environment, unregulated financial operations, a disordered banking sector, conflicting interests, criminal exploitation, poor oversight and reporting, flawed risk assessment and weak government performance have affected the performance of the AML system.

This paper looks at the problem of ML from a holistic perspective covering different dimensions such as black money whitening, illegal funds movements, informal money transfer systems, use of offshore refuge for hiding money and so on and the state’s responses to the syndrome. The evaluation will be of particular relevance to policymakers, anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies, the financial intelligence operators and public prosecutors dealing with criminal justice.

Some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly are related to violence, crime and crime control issues. In what seems to be an innovative approach, the so-called ‘international community’ has seemed to reach the commonsensical agreement that, in order to enjoy sustainable development and strengthen the capabilities, well-being and freedom of the citizens of the global south, their governments must reduce violence and crime (SDG 16.1). The SDGs also seem to provide the response to tackle crime and violence in the global south. SDG 16.3 aims at ‘promoting the rule of Law at the national and international level and ensuring equal access to justice for all’. Thus, the promotion of the rule of law has commonly been understood as the strengthening of the criminal justice system and State security forces to reduce crime and impunity in the global south. Focussing on Latin America, this article will critically discuss the problematic presuppositions and implications of such a paradigm, which tends to impose, reproduce and legitimise the particular worldviews of global north countries and institutions. This approach is counterproductive, for it does not acknowledge the particularities and historical trajectories of Latin American countries, while naturalising specific global north political, economic and truth regimes.

Global mobility remains one of the most pressing challenges of our times. Countries in the north are turning to major ‘sending’ countries in the south to secure their cooperation in controlling their borders and in repatriation processes. By explicitly linking migration to global security threats and weak governance, these migration control initiatives are justified by development goals and sometimes financed by official development assistance (ODA). By connecting criminology with international development scholarship, this chapter seeks to advance our understanding of the novel intersections between criminal justice, security and development to govern mass migration. Focusing on UK policies and the analysis of specific programmes, it interrogates what does the sustainable development goal (10.7) of facilitating ‘orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration’ concretely entail? And to what extent does the language of ‘managed migration’ legitimise restrictive border controls policies and even conflict with other global development goals?

The purpose of this article is to discuss transnational organized crime (TOC) and the relationship to good governance in the Caribbean.

This paper is exploratory. It follows a path of inductive reasoning, from observation of the eight global cases to a broader general analysis and the development of a theoretical framework or ideal type.

The influence of TOC on governance in the Caribbean is worrying. Normative theories of democracy, public administration and governance no longer apply. Economic growth diminishes, unemployment rises, crime rises.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the impact of TOC on good governance especially on Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean.

Corporate crime affects the stability of the international financial system and the business world system has made considerable efforts to fight all aspects of corporate crimes. Fraud and white-collar crime has increased considerably over the recent years and this trend is expected to continue.

This chapter defines corporate crime and its categories as well as considering the ways in which such crime occurs. This is set within the context of other failures such as Enron.

These crimes are considered in the context of ethical behaviour but it is reported that the various measures taken to dissuade these crimes at various levels just have not seems to reduce such crime.

In many respects this chapter introduces the contexts and acts as preparation for the other chapters in the book and so is not exhaustive in scope.

Since not all fraud and abuse is discovered and reported, the cost of fraud to businesses is hard to be estimated.

The chapter discusses the context in which corporate crime occurs.