Date of Award

3-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice

Department

Criminal Justice

First Reader/Committee Chair

Bichler, Gisela

Abstract

Illicit drugs can travel across multiple borders before reaching their intended retail market. International drug trafficking is important because it introduces a large quantity of foreign sourced illicit drugs into domestic drug markets. Of utmost importance are countries that lie along the transshipment paths used by international drug trafficking operations that facilitate the movement of illicit drugs. Understanding the characteristics of countries operating as transit states is necessary to combat transshipment operations. The study investigates social, economic, geographic, and political factors that have the potential to account for nations being positioned as transit states in illicit drug transshipment networks generated from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Individual Drug Seizures data set. Quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) regression models reveal that border connectivity is the most significant identifying marker of transit states embedded in international drug trafficking.

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