Understanding the new geographies of organised crime: Empirical studies into the spatialities of organised criminal phenomena

Organised crime – and the people, processes and structures involved – do not exist in a geographical vacuum. They have an inherent spatiality: shaped by and shaping the places they occupy in physical, virtual and hybrid spaces. Although the ‘social embeddedness’ of organised crime is relatively well-recognised, its spatiality – or ‘spatial embeddedness’ – has been neglected. This article contextualises and introduces our special issue on the new geographies of organised crime. We put forward a central argument that geographical lenses can advance and enrich understanding of organised crime, briefly review relevant literature and explain some of the foundational concepts in geographical thinking. We discuss the rationale for this special issue and highlight its papers’ main contributions. Since the geographies of the illicit are full of complexities, heterogeneities and subjectivities, we do not propose any singular approach, but rather see a plurality of possibilities for better incorporating geography into organised crime scholarship. Accordingly, the papers are theoretically and methodologically diverse, as well as covering varied topics and locations.