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Abstract
If as suspected, criminal enterprise feeds off legal trade, then anti-crime policy must target the points at which legal and illicit markets intersect. This study offers a strategy to pinpoint and calibrate the degree of fusion across an entire trade system. Legal and illicit processes and mechanisms essential to all sectors of an industry – development, financing, handling, possession and regulation – were dissected using a script methodology. Eigenvector centrality scores identified interlocking tools and actors. The results highlight the role played by supporting industries (e.g. insurers, auction houses, storage specialists, foundations and high net-worth buyers) and the need to target temporary markets, shipping activity and financial transactions with regulatory policing efforts. Vaccinating global economies from illicit activity is best achieved through a soft law approach aimed at identifiable mechanisms (faulty props) used by groups playing pivotal trade roles (bad actors).
Notes
1. 1. Perrow, Normal Accidents.
2. 2. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime; and Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem”.
3. 3. Bowman, “Crimes Against Culture”; Massy, “Antiquity Art Market”; Mackenzie, “Illicit Antiquities”; and Passas and Proulx, “Overview of Crimes”.
4. 4. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime; and Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem”.
5. 5. Morselli and Roy, “Brokerage”.
6. 6. The term cultural property relates to a broad range of artefacts that generally fall under two categories – fine arts and antiquities. Fine arts are a class of objects that are subject to aesthetic criteria judging them to be beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary significance. Commonly, this refers to illustrated or decorated material evidencing skilled workmanship that conveys or represents human emotion or experience. Antiquities are objects from ancient times that are often decorative and have historical value. Thus, an ordinary object may gain extraordinary significance through the passage of time, for example, a household ceramic pot from Pre-Columbian society unearthed during an excavation gains importance due to its historical and cultural qualities, even when aesthetically it is of little interest. While fine arts and antiquities can be seen as conceptually distinct, much of the underlying trade activity and consumer use of these cultural artefacts is the same. Further blurring the practical distinction between object classification is that many antiquities could be considered old fine arts, for example, painted alter panels. To better understand the global trade in cultural property, the present study investigates the market as a whole. As used here, the terms ‘arts’ and ‘cultural property’ are used interchangeably.
7. 7. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime.
8. 8. Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem,” 94.
9. 9. Malm and Bichler, “Collaborating Criminals”.
10. 10. Ibid.; and Malm, Bichler, and Nash, “Criminal Enterprise Groups”.
11. 11. Ho, Art Theft.
12. 12. Bowman, “Crimes Against Culture”.
13. 13. Felson, Crime and Nature; and Lacoste and Tremblay, “Crime and Innovation”.
14. 14. While events are often used to identify procedural elements, incidents are not the only source of information used to deconstruct illicit systems. Scholars have used a wide range of documents and primary data-gathering techniques such as interviews with industry professionals and delinquents (e.g. Leclerc, Wortley, and Smallbone, “Sex Offenders”; Chiu, Leclerc, and Townsley, “Drug Manufacturing”; and Morselli and Roy, “Brokerage”).
15. 15. Cornish, “Procedural Analysis”.
16. 16. Ibid.; and Morselli and Roy, “Brokerage”.
17. 17. Chiu, Leclerc, and Townsley, “Drug Manufacturing”; and Leclerc, Wortley, and Smallbone, “Sex Offenders”.
18. 18. Chiu, Leclerc, and Townsley, “Drug Manufacturing”.
19. 19. Tremblay, Tallon, and Hurley, “Body Switching”.
20. 20. Morselli and Roy, “Brokerage”.
21. 21. Ibid.
22. 22. McAndrew, Global Art Market.
23. 23. Ibid.
24. 24. Ibid.
25. 25. Eckstein, Art Fair; McAndrew, Global Art Market; McAndrew, Fine Art; and Robertson and Chong, Art Business.
26. 26. Art investments consistently outperform equities, bonds and cash during growth periods with above- and below-trend inflation. As such, these investments provide a hedge against inflation and other volatile markets. According to the Mei Moses Fine Art Indices, the 50-year trend shows an annual return comparable to the S&P 500 and out-performing 10-year US Treasury Bills (Eckstein, “Investing in Art”; and McAndrew, Fine Art).
27. 27. Clarke, “Government Policy”; Clotfelter, “Art Museums”; Robertson and Chong, Art Business; Salisbury and Sujo, Provenance; Thompson, Stuffed Shark; and Watson, Sotheby’s.
28. 28. It is beyond the scope of this article to review all important international conventions, bilateral agreements and national laws, and other programmes designed to stem the illicit trade in cultural property. For a concise review of legal conventions, see Torsen, “Dark Corners”.
29. 29. Returning to the 1987 sale of van Gogh’s Irises provides an illustration. Alan Bond purchased the painting during a public auction at Sotheby’s in New York for $53.9 million (€40.2 million). Christie’s challenged that there was no real under-bidder challenging Bond’s bids during the event, insinuating that the price was artificially inflated. In response, the auctioneer’s records were only shown to chairman Lord Carrington. Satisfied, the matter was dropped and the details regarding the identity of the under-bidder remain a secret (Torsen, “Dark Corners”, 139–40).
30. 30. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime; and Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem”.
31. 31. Bowman, “Crimes Against Culture”; and Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem”.
32. 32. Kersel, “Transcending Borders”; Picarelli, “Working Group”; Stevenson, Forsythe, and Weatherburn, “Stolen Goods Market”; and Tremblay, Tallon, and Hurley, “Body Switching”.
33. 33. See for instance: Hartocollis, A., “Ex-Tyco Chief to Settle Tax Evasion Charges.” The New York Times. Accessed March 14, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/business/13tyco.html?nTop%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FPeople%2FK%2FKozlowski%2C%20L.%20Dennis; Naphin and Schorn, Dennis Kozlowski; and Watson, Sotheby’s.
34. 34. Key word searches miss materials and electronic abstracting services are incomplete for older volumes.
35. 35. The trade system evolved considerably since World War II with the passing of critical international conventions (e.g. 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property), several economic boom and bust cycles (e.g. international boom 1987–1990 and low of 1991) and the adjudication of landmark legal cases (e.g. Sotheby’s and Christie’s price fixing case 2000–2002). Materials predating 1970 were not considered current enough for this study and preference was given for the most recent documents (post 2000).
36. 36. Development was activity aimed at producing art, educating the public or developing talent; economic activity pertains to all matters of funding, financing and supporting art use, sales or consumption; handling activity involves the movement of objects; possession entails the acquisition and personal use of objects; and regulation covers all activities related to taxation, crime and fraud investigation, trading oversight and international movement control.
37. 37. A list of sources is available upon request.
38. 38. To determine the methodological rigour underlying the documents’ findings, several criteria were developed. First, to be classed as exceptional, the work must have involved a multiyear, well-documented journalistic or scholarly activity with clear evidence that intensive or broad-based ethnographic or investigative strategies were used (e.g. Watson, Sotheby’s); or the source reported using conventional research methods, with a sufficiently large sample, and was published in a peer-reviewed journal or edited scholarly book (e.g. Bowman, “Crimes Against Culture”). Second, the source focused on explaining a defined aspect of the trade system. Third, the material was published after 1995.
39. 39. To complete the scripts, facets were sorted into scenes; scenes are goal-based operations or functions. For example, foundations or charity operations (scene) may involve authenticating art, board formation and maintenance, funding solicitations (facets). Then, scenes were organised into scripts of associated market activity (i.e. foundation operations were included with hosting art festivals under the script of ‘arts promotions’). Finally, scripts were organised into sectors of the arts economy (i.e. arts promotions were grouped within the development sector). The final data file included 18 scripts and 85 scenes. The present research only used tools and actors within sectors. The other components of the script are the subject of a subsequent study.
40. 40. Bonacich and Lloyd, “Eigenvector-like Measures”.
41. 41. Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman, UCINET 2.0 for Windows.
42. 42. Knoke and Yang, Social Network Analysis; Wasserman and Faust, Social Network Analysis; and Xu and Chen, “Dark Networks”.
43. 43. The reliability test was completed 4 months after the initial data set was produced. If the data extraction process was stable, then the dyads (pairs of actors) appearing in the reliability check would also exist in the original data file. The results indicate that the coding process was stable for all sectors – development (90.9%), economic (83.0%), handling (78.6%), possession (76.7%) and regulation (76.2%) links were consistent. Miscoding appeared to be primarily associated with inconsistent sector assignment or differences in naming conventions. Lists of script components were not used during the reliability check because the research team was attempting to duplicate the data file without visual aids.
44. 44. Knoke and Yang, Social Network Analysis.
45. 45. Density is calculated by dividing the total number of ties present in the network by the possible ties if everything was connected.
46. 46. Affiliate networks are two-mode networks, where links are generated between two different types of entities (e.g. people and organisations).
47. 47. Borgatti, “Centrality and AIDS”.
48. 48. Interpreting eigenvalues within network analysis is comparable to identifying the first factor in a principal component analysis; high scores reflect the degree of inclusion in the first factor (Bonacich, “Factoring and Weighting”; and Bonacich and Lloyd, “Eigenvector-like Measures”).
49. 49. Borgatti, “Centrality and AIDS”.
50. 50. Bonacich, “Factoring and Weighting”; and Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman, UCINET 2.0 for Windows.
51. 51. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime; and Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem”.
52. 52. Eckstein, Art Fair.
53. 53. McAndrew, Global Art Market.
54. 54. Eckstein, Art Fair.
55. 55. ARTEX, “Transportation”.
56. 56. McAndrew, Global Art Market.
57. 57. AXA Art Insurance Corporation, “Global Risk Art Survey Platform”.
58. 58. Most dealers organise their season around at least one of the most internationally acclaimed art fairs/biennales: Art Basel Miami (US), Art Palm Beach (US), Basel Switzerland, Maastricht (Netherlands), Venice Art Biennale (Italy), Paris Art Biennale (France) and the Frieze Fair at Regents Park (UK).
59. 59. Eckstein, Art Fair.
60. 60. Ibid.
61. 61. Ibid.
62. 62. Hawley, “International Illicit Trade”.
63. 63. Eckstein, Willette, and McAndrew, “Art Funds”.
64. 64. Mackenzie, “Illicit Antiquities”; Passas and Proulx, “Overview of Crime”; and Tijhuis, “Trafficking Problem”.
65. 65. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime, 209.
66. 66. Eck and Eck, “Crime Place and Pollution”.
67. 67. Rodrigue, Commodity Chain Analysis.
68. 68. Passas and Proulx, “Overview of Crime”; and Tijhuis, Transnational Crime.
69. 69. Hawley, “International Illicit Trade”.
70. 70. Ibid.
71. 71. Ibid.
72. 72. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime.
73. 73. Picarelli, “Working Group”.
74. 74. Clarke, “Situational Crime Prevention”; Clarke and Weisburd, “Diffusion of Crime Control”; and Cornish and Clarke, “Opportunities”.
75. 75. Cornish and Clarke, “Opportunities”; and Wortley, “Situational Precipitators”.
76. 76. Morselli and Roy, “Brokerage”.
77. 77. Chiu, Leclerc, and Townsley, “Drug Manufacturing”; and Felson, Crime and Nature.
78. 78. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime.
79. 79. Ibid.
80. 80. Xu and Chen, “Dark Networks”.
81. 81. Picarelli, “Working Group”.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gisela Bichler
Dr. Gisela Bichler is a Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, San Bernardino and Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research (CCJR). As the CCJR Director, she works with a range of criminal justice agencies, community groups and city governments to develop solutions to local crime and public safety issues that invoke stronger place management and situational crime prevention. This often involves the use of various research technologies (e.g. geographic information systems and social network analysis) to analyse crime issues. Her current research examines the structure of illicit networks associated with criminal enterprise groups, transnational illicit markets, terrorism, and corporate interlock. Recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, Global Crime, Crime and Delinquency, Security Journal, Crime Patterns and Analysis and Psychological Reports.
Stacy Bush
Stacy Bush is a Research Assistant for the Center for Criminal Justice Research (CCJR) and a current Graduate Student at California State University, San Bernardino. In working for the CCJR, she has been involved in research concerning geographical issues involving crime, along with focusing on illicit networks (e.g. the art market, corporate offending and terrorist networks).
Aili Malm
Dr. Aili Malm is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at California State University, Long Beach. Her research interests centre on the intersection between policing and social policy. She is interested in both: the assessment and evaluation of policing strategies and intelligence, and integrating empirical evidence and theory to inform policy. In this capacity, her research makes use of social network analysis, spatial analysis and textual analysis. Her peer-reviewed publications appear in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Crime and Delinquency, Global Crime, Policy Science, Social Networks and others.