The Prediction and Control of Organized Crime: The Experience of Post-Soviet Ukraine/Labour after Communism: Auto Workers and Their Unions in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus

• Published in: Journal of Ukrainian studies 2005-07, Vol.30 (1), p.141
• Main Author: Harasymiw, Bohdan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communism; Corruption; Grass roots movement; Money laundering; Neoliberalism; Organized crime; Politics; Transnationalism; Working class
• ISSN: 0228-1635

The book edited by Finckenauer and Schrock is the result of a partnership between United States experts on crime associated with the National Institute of Justice and their Ukrainian counterparts at the Academy of Legal Sciences in Ukraine. The result is a volume that, like Ukraine at this time, is neither here nor there. Because of the lack of Ukrainian expertise on the American side of this project, the transliteration of Ukrainian place names into English is atrocious. In addition to these three chapters, the volume also contains the editors' introduction on the American-Ukrainian research partnership, a brief and superficial account of trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation, an even briefer note on money laundering, an equally brief contribution on economic crime, itself an undefined concept, an interesting paper showing Ukraine's increasing importance as a transit country in the global heroin trade, a seven-page note on business victimization as a form of adaptation, whatever that means, and, finally, a lot of generalizations within a short space under the inscrutable title, "A Behavioral Model for Ukrainian Organized Crime Groups."